Pedro Alvarez's Slow Start

The Pittsburgh Pirates are 7-8 as they head into Monday's game with the Cincinnati Reds. The Pirates have shown some good signs and some bad signs at the beginning of this 2011 season. Probably the biggest negative for the Pirates so far has been Pedro Alvarez.

Now nobody expected Alvarez to start hot, he has been a slow starter in his young career and appears to be the kind of player that is very vulnerable to having that become a trend in his career. However, the start he has had to this 2011 season has been really, really terrible.

There have been 7 games where Pedro has gone hitless. That leaves 8 games where Pedro has gotten hits. He has only two multi-hit games, and there have only been 2 games in which he has not struck out. He has 11 hits in 57 at bats, which equates to a .193 batting average. Only 2 of his 11 hits have gone for extra bases, both doubles.

Pedro's striking out an alarming rate. He has 20 strikeouts in 62 plate appearances. He is on pace to strike out over 200 times this season, which would put him right with the league leaders on an average year. That's not as disturbing as the lack of power he has shown. He has 0 home runs, and there has only been 1 ball that really even had a shot. He's hitting 48.6% of his balls on the ground, 34.3% of them for flyballs, and only 17.1% of them for line drives.

A lot of the problems have seemed to start with his approach at the plate. He hasn't been swinging at strikes when he gets them. He's swung at only 61.2% of the strikes he's been thrown, which is 4 percentage points below the league average this year. Pedro's not only swinging at too many pitches out of the strike zone, but he isn't making contact enough when he does so. He makes contact with 57.1% of the pitches he swings at that are out of the zone, 9 points below the league average. His contact percentage on balls inside the zone is even worse, at 12 points below the league average (75%). His contact rate altogether is 69.3%, with the league average of 80%. The final statistic I'm going to give you here is that he's swinging and missing at 12.7% of the strikes he's thrown, the league average is 8.4%.

You can tell that Pedro has been having a ton of trouble making contact. 34% of his at bats are ending in strikeouts, a scary number. He's drawing a fair amount of walks, especially lately, with 8.6% of his at bats going for walks.

It doesn't seem to be just a matter of Pedro putting the ball in play, because he really hasn't been hitting the ball hard at all when he does. There have been a ton of pitches on the outer half of the plate that he has tried to pull and ended up just hitting weak grounders on. I think he's pressing at the plate majorly; it's hard not to when you start this slow. He got a day off on Thursday to try and clear his head and get him on track, but since then he's a nice 2/12.

The Pirates need Pedro to hit the ball out of the ballpark for them this year, and he hasn't done anything close to that so far. He's been struggling mightily. We certainly aren't worried yet, it's been only 15 games and he's only played 110 career games, but it would sure be a huge boost if he could turn it around soon. The offense is treading water without his production, but he is a huge key to this offense taking the next step and helping this team win some baseball games.

Keep a close eye on Pedro the next few games, I'm sure there are going to be some adjustments made to try and bust him out of this slump.

Here's hoping Pedro gets on track and hits 80 bombs this year.