Today: PIT Prospect Pedro Alvarez
The second overall pick of the 2008 draft, Pittsburgh's Pedro Alvarez is one of the team's youngest and most highly-regarded prospects.
An on-the-radar bat for many years, Alvarez has been one of the country's top prospects since he was a teenager at Horace Mann High School. An All-American in 2005, he was also the New York High School Player of the Year and ended the year ranked as Baseball America's 97th ranked pro prospect (at any level) in the country.
Alvarez, playing mainly shortstop, hit .329 with 22 homers at Vanderbilt in his freshman college year, and followed that up with an even better .386 and 18 homers as a junior, making the first team All-American squad both seasons.
Alvarez is a left-handed hitter with plus power, probably the strongest bat in the Pirates system. He's not selective enough to succeed as a big-leaguer yet, but that should come with experience. In the field, he'd be an adequate (if large) shortstop, but with his growing frame and strong arm, he'd be a much better fit at third base or in right field.
Lowly Pittsburgh is a team stacked in hitting prospects, especially power bats (they're sort of the offensive equivalent of the punchless San Francisco system), but it looks like the organization is prepared to make room for Alvarez at third base in the near future.
He may get a quick look at MLB in September, but he'll almost certainly play all of 2009 in the minors, anyway, as he learns to handle better-quality breaking stuff than he's ever seen before. He should start out in high-A and end up in AA, ready to challenge for a big league job in early 2010.
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