Moving on from our catcher who can’t catch, lets talk prospects and promotions.  With Walker, Tabata, and Brad Lincoln all called up, the only major piece left at AAA is top prospect Pedro Alvarez.  There’s been quite a bit of speculation about Pedro being called up during the upcoming home stand.  The team could clearly use the help, and from all indications based on his numbers in Indy, Pedro is ready.  The only real question is when?  Given that nothing has been announced yet, I’m gonna guess it won’t happen before tomorrows game.  The Friday night game against Cleveland might be a good choice, but no matter when the call up comes, expect it to come soon.

Finally, I want to take a very quick look back at the Pirates draft.  The Pirates were able to nap the top 2 upside arms in the draft in first and second round picks Jameson Taillon and Stetson Allie.  Those 2 players alone, assuming they can sign them, could make this draft a huge success.  Both can touch the high 90s on the radar gun, and Allie has even been clocked in triple digits.  Taillon is the more polished of the two, with Allie being seen as very raw and with significant command and control issues that will need to be worked out.  Nonetheless, these 2 players would be very significant additions to the system.  As Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus said on Rocco DeMaro’s Pirates extra Innings radio show after the draft, if they can sign both Allie and Taillon, this draft could potentially be seen as the day that turned this franchise around.  Now obviously that assumes a lot in the way of projection and development, but it does show you the potential these 2 prep pitchers have.  They are precisely the kind of high-upside arms the Pirates minor league system currently lacks.

Beyond the first 2 rounds, I can’t claim to know much about the players the Pirates drafted.  There was a heavy focus on right handed prep pitchers, which was seen as the strength of this draft.  Realistically, its tough to evaluate any teams draft in MLB until after the August 15th signing deadline.  Once we find out which players the Pirates sign and which go to college or otherwise go unsigned, it will be much easier to figure out what kind of talent they have acquired.

LowA – West Virginia

3B – Jarek Cunningham:  5/12, 1 2B, 3K

OF – Evan Chambers: 0/8, 4BB, 3K

SP – Nathan Baker: 4.0 IP, 4 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 7 K

There aren’t a lot of real prospects at this level.  These stats pretty much speak for themselves.  The 7 Ks from Baker are nice, as are the hits from Cunningham.  By the way, in future weeks I’m going to try to include stats for both this week and cumulative for the season.  Since its only week 1, that’s not necesary at this point.

HighA – Bradenton

OF – Robbie Grossman: 6/12, 1 2B, 1 HR, 2 BB

C – Tony Sanchez: 4/11, 2 2B, 2 BB, 1 K

OF – Starling Marte: 4/11, 1 2B, 1 3B, 1 BB, 3 K

1B – Calvin Anderson: 3/10, 3 BB, 5 K

SP – Bryan Morris: 4.2 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 0 ER, 5 K

SP – Jeff Locke: 4.2 IP, 4 H 2 R, 2 ER, 4 K

Lots of legit prospects here, including 2 I didn’t mention in 2B Gift Ngoepe and P Aaron Pribanic.  Last years top pick Sanchez is slated to move quickly, so don’t expect him to stay in Bradenton long, especially if he keeps hitting.  One of the big knocks you hear on Starling Marte is that he is a free swinger, so the strikeouts are a bit concerning, but one can hope that will improve with time.  Also worth pointing out that Pirates brass seems high on Morris based on what he did this Spring, and his start this week did nothing to contradict that.

AA – Altoona

CF – Gorkys Hernandez: 3/11, 2 BB, 3 K, 1 SB

SS – Chase D’Arnaud: 3/12, 2 2B, 3 K

SP – Tim Alderson: 5.0 IP, 4 H, 1 BB, 2 K

RP – Danny Moskos: 2.0 IP, 1 H, 2 BB, 2 K

I really like D’Arnaud and Alderson was the big prize in the Sanchez trade last year.  It would be nice to see Moskos start to capitalize on some of his talent and become a valuable late inning relief pitcher, just so passing on Matt Wieters doesn’t end up being a total waste.

AAA – Indianapolis

OF – Brandon Jones: 3/8, 2 2B, 3 K

OF – Jose Tabata: 5/15, 2 2B, 3 K, 2 SB

3B – Pedro Alvarez: 3/13, 3 HR, 3 BB, 4 K

SP – Brad Lincoln: 3.1 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 5 ER, 3 HR,1 BB, 4 K

SP – Donnie Veal: 5.0 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 1 K

This team is absolutely loaded.  Kevin Hart, Argenis Diaz, Brandon Moss, etc. are also on this team.  If Pedro keeps hitting like this, he’ll be up in Pittsburgh very soon.  Lincoln struggled mightily in his debut, but I don’t wanna read too much into one start.

Before I get into it,  I thought it was appropriate to throw out links to all the previous 2010 season preview posts.

Written back in Janury: Prospects part 1 & part 2

Its probably useless at this point, but for the sake of completeness, here is my “very brief” spring training preview

Probably my favorite of the series, Expectations

And finally, the Pitching & Defense and Offense previews

OK, let’s get to the predictions

April 5th, Today:  The Pirates will start the year off 1-0, getting to Vicente Padilla early and often and the bullpen holds on for a 7-5 victory.

April 28th: The Pirates lose the last of a 3 game sweep in Milwaukee, falling to 10-11 and below .500 for good.

June 3rd: An off day.  Aki Iwamura is traded for a mid-level pitching prospect, clearing the way for Andy LaRoche, off to a hot start, to move to second base and Pedro Alvarez to make his big league debut at home the next day against San Francisco.  Alvarez finishes the season with 22 homers.

June 7th: The Pirates select phenom Bryce Harper second overall in Major League Baseball’s first year player draft.

July 13th:  Andrew McCutchen is the Pirates lone All-Star, as the team crawls into the break 10 games under .500.

July 20th: Brad Lincoln makes his Pirates debut by giving the team their first victory of the season against Milwaukee.

July 31st: For the first time in god knows how long, the Pirates do not make a major deadline deal.

October 3rd:  The Pirates beat the Florida Marline to end the season with 70 wins, good for last in the NL Central, 4 games behind 5th place Houston.  Jose Tabata spends the entire year at AAA, and is not called up as many expected when the season began.

October 4th: In a one game playoff, Aroldis Chapman beats Adam Wainright giving the Reds the NL Central crown.

November 4th: AL wildcard Tampa Bay beats NL West champion Colorado to win the world series in 7 games.

Pirates MVP: Andrew McCutchen

Pirates ROY: Pedro Alvarez

Pirates “Cy Young”: Charlie Morton

NL Cy Young:  Roy Halladay

NL ROY: Aroldis Chapman

NL MVP: Albert Pujols

AL Cy Young: Felix Hernandez

AL ROY: Austin Jackson

AL MVP: Evan Longoria

For opening day, and probably until Pedro Alvarez is called up or someone gets traded, the lineup is going to look something like this:

1. A. Iwamura, 2B

2. A. McCutchen, CF

3. G. Jones, RF

4. R. Doumit, C

5. L. Milledge, LF

6. J. Clement, 1B

7. A. LaRoche, 3B

8. Pitcher

9. R. Cedeno, SS

Starting at the top, Iwamura is a solid on base guy who should set the table nicely.  Everyone, myself included expect ‘Cutch will only continue to get better and while there’s certainly room to question Jones (I don’t think anyone expects him to keep up his 21 HR, .938 OPS in 82 games pace he set last year), it’s very reasonable to expect he can hit 30 or so dingers and drive in a bunch of runs hitting in the 3 hole.

The next 4 are the real question marks and will make or break this team from a run scoring point of view.  Doumit has proven over the career he can hit the ball well, especially for a catcher, when he is healthy.  The big question is, can he stay healthy for the full 162 game season, or will he see time on the DL once again in 2010.  Lastings Milledge is probably getting his last shot to prove himself as an every day big leaguer.  He’s been saying all the right things this spring, and one of those things he’s been saying is that he’ll be able to hit for more power now that the wrist injury he had last year is fully healed.  Only time will tell of course, but I believe this is the year Milledge finally breaks out.  Clement is probably the biggest question mark of all, having only played 75 career games in the bigs, none of them at 1B.  Based on his minor league numbers, he’s proven all that he can at AAA, and between his power and the Clemente wall in right field, one can at least hope he can be a productive number 6 hitter.  Finally, we come to Andy LaRoche.  Everyone knows what he did last year, and while that was a massive improvement over what he did in ‘08 after coming over in the Jason Bay trade, he still has a ways to go to be where you want your everyday third baseman to be offensively.  Based on his minor league numbers though, there’s reason to believe he could get there, and what he does will go along way to dictating what the pirates do when Pedro Alvarez is ready.  Even if he doesn’t improve over his ‘09 season, he’s a very solid on base guy, and you could do a lot worse for your number 7 hitter.  It’s probably unreasonable to expect all four of these guys to break out to their potential at one time, but if 2 or three of them can, and Jones can maintain 80% of what he put up in the second half last year, the team should be in good shape offensively.

Finally, the Pirates are all set to bat the pitcher 8th and Ronny Cedeno in the 9 spot to turn the order over.  While I like the idea in theory (see here), I don’t like having a career .280 OBP guy playing that role, and would much rather see Andy LaRoche or Lastings Milledge batting ninth.

Moving to the bench, Delwyn Young has been a solid hitter his whole career except when he is expending all his energy pre-game trying to learn to play second base.  John Raynor is speedy and could be a nice pinch runner and defensive replacement.  Ryan Church is a very solid fourth outfielder and Bobby Crosby was the AL rookie of the year in a former life.

With all that said, I’m probably in the minority here when I say this team could be solid offensively.  They aren’t going to be great by any stretch of the imagination, but I really do believe that offense isn’t what will kill this team, but rather the pitching and defense.  And once Pedro shows up, likely in early June, well let’s just say the offense can only get better when that happens, and this team is going to begin to come together for the future at that point.

Coming down the stretch last season, the Pirates were truly dreadful, playing some of the worst baseball seen around these parts in decades.  After the July 31st trading deadline, the team was 18-41 leading to their overall record of 62-99.  With little exception, the team that lost so consistently down the stretch last year is the team you will see this year, so it is hard to expect drastic improvement.  For any number of reasons though, the 2010 Pirates win-loss record isn’t what I want to focus on, so when I talk about expectations, I’m not talking about what I expect in terms of wins and losses.  Rather, there are several specific areas where I would like to see marked improvement in order to show me that this team continues to be on the right track toward long term winning.  I want to focus on those areas.  I don’t mean to imply that if all of these expectation aren’t met that the franchise is doomed.  Rather, my point is this:  it is very easy to look at the past 17 seasons and the current win loss record and conclude that no progress is being made.  It is harder, and requires a deeper analysis, to identify the areas the team is improving, and where they must continue to improve.  As Charlie over at Bucs Dugout notes, even 3 or 4 years ago it was obvious 2010 wasn’t going to be a good year for the Bucs.  But where is the team improving?  What signs can we expect to see this season that display that improvement?  And perhaps more importantly, what are the potential signs that things are headed in the wrong direction?

Let me start by completely contradicting the entire paragraph I just wrote.  Even if wins and losses aren’t the most important metric, they are a metric most people focus on, so any post talking about expectations that doesn’t at least address wins and losses is incomplete.  Therefore, I’d like to state for the record that I expect the Pirates to finish around the 70 win mark.  PECOTA projects a 70-92 mark for the team, and that sounds about right to me.  I actually think 70 wins is on the high side of where they will likely finish, but there are so many open questions (prospect promotions, potential trades, etc) and moving pieces with this team, any projection is going to be volatile.

With wins and losses out of the way, lets talk about some other expectation for this season, starting with a certain highly regarded hitting prospect.  I think pretty much everyone expects Pedro Alvarez to be called up in early June, similar to Andrew McCutchen last season and immediately take over duty as the everyday third baseman.  I think it’s important to keep in mind that he is starting the year at AAA, a level he never saw last season, and it may take him some time to get acclimated to that level of pitching before he excels.  Likewise, there seems to be a lot of people expecting Pedro to show up in June and immediately start raking, after all, both McCutchen and GFJ showed up in Pittsburgh last season and excelled immediately, so why can’t Pedro.  The flaw in that logic is that both players had several seasons at AAA under their belt, making the jump less dramatic.  I do expect Pedro to be called up in June or July, but I actually expect him to struggle a bit early on.  We know from his time in Lynchburg last season that he can be a bit of free swinger, so expect lots of strike outs balanced by some impressive displays of power.  A final line for the year of .260/.350/.480 seems reasonable to me, and as long as he is improving as the year goes on, posting his best numbers in September and October, I think I’ll be happy.  If he does indeed struggle in his first month or so in the majors, that is not a sign that the apocalypse is coming (plus, if the Pirates really could cause an apocalypse, it already would have happened at some point in the last 17 years, right?).

Pedro Alvarez is a very key piece in the development of this organization, but he’s not the only one.  I don’t really feel like enumerating every key prospect and my expectations for them this season (not to mention, I already kind of did that here and here), but I would like to touch on my expectation for the farm system as a whole.  When it comes to the farm system, this season is really no different than any other.  Basically, I want to see progress.  I want to see the high bonus HS arms they drafted last June to make solid pro debuts.  I want to see guys at AAA, much of which has been acquired via trade the last 2 years, pushing for spots on the big league roster.  All of this probably seems obvious and self explanatory, but there is a larger point I want to make here.  Not every prospect is going to succeed, as long as there is a general progression of talent through the pipeline, the system as a whole remains in balance which leads to a successful big league club.  The success(or failure) of any given prospect shouldn’t define the success of those running the organization.  As long as over the long term, guys are progressing through the levels, the organization is in good shape.  However, we are at a tipping point in how this team goes about acquiring that talent.  As has been publicly stated several times by the front office, the trades are “over.”  I put quotes around over because for a team in the pirates financial situation, there will always be trades, but I do believe that the en masse trading is done with.  That means that the vast majority of talent now will be acquired via the draft and international free agency, and player development in the key.  At this point, almost every player you now see called up to Pittsburgh will be a Neal Huntington acquired player.  A GM’s success or failure must be defined by his ability to evaluate, acquire, and develop talent and it will be the same with Huntington.  Therefore, now is the time to begin evaluating for real Huntington’s success in this area.

As I stated in the open, much of the roster is exactly what it was at the end of 2009.  The one area of the roster where this isn’t true is the bullpen.  Neal Huntington has stated frequently throughout his tenure as Pirates GM that relief pitching is the hardest thing to project in baseball, the implication being that spending big dollars on free-agent relief pitchers doesn’t make sense.  With that in mind, the way he went about building the bullpen for this season, combining young, talented, for the most part pre-arbitration arms with a few key veteran acquisitions and brining in a bunch of non-roster invitees to compete for the few remaining spots is likely to be his model to build a relief corps for the foreseeable future.  It will be very interesting to see how successful that effort was.

A quick aside: Generally, on this blog, when I talk about success I try to use numbers, and try to avoid speaking in loose, undefined language.  As a blogger, there are a lot of obvious advantages to always keeping things concrete.  For the purposes of relief pitching though, trying to do that is very difficult.  So many things affect bullpen performance, from inherited runners, to the defense behind them, that there are very few good statistics to measure relief performance, and the ones that do exist are hard to understand.  Baseball Prospectus uses something called WXRL and while I have a cursory understanding of that number, I don’t think it would mean much to most people if I said something like “I expect the pirates bullpen to post a composite WXRL of 10 this season.”  So for this one instance, I’m going to be speaking in very general terms, forgive me in advance please.

OK, back to the question at hand, what do I expect from the Pirates bullpen this season?  Lets just say that I expect the bullpen to be “better” than last year.  I expect Octavio Dotel to be more successful at closing games than Matt Capps was last season (that shouldn’t be hard).  I also expect to see the bullpen blow fewer leads and do a better job of turning quality starts into victories, but again, I’d like to stress that that is heavily dependent upon the defense (which will be bad this year, as I’ll detail in a future season preview post) so this may not be an easy thing to measure.  I think the important thing here is to see how successful a team can be building a bullpen from other teams castoffs, which is essentially what we have in Pittsburgh this season.  If it proves to be successful, it’s a very encouraging sign for future seasons when the quality of relief pitching will matter much more than it does to a 70 win team.

I’m already at 1600 words, so I think I’ll stop here.  I have (at least) 2 more season preview posts coming before opening day, the first focusing on position players, and the second on pitching, and I’m sure I’ll talk about expectations of certain players and how it relates to the team’s progress toward winning in those as well.

In other “news” the Pirates chose to renew the contracts of 28 players with 0-3 years of service time.  This  move is, more or less, just a formality.

About a week ago I posted about Joel Hanrahan’s injury.  Today we got some good news on that front, as it was announced that his latest MRI revealed no structural damage to his injured throwing elbow.  There is still no hard time-table given for his return, but the terms “dissipating inflamation” and “no structural damage” are both very good things, and should mean he’ll be back sooner rather than later.

This one is behind a pay-wall, ESPN insiders only, but Buster Olney seems very bullish on the potential of this Pirates line-up, especially the power potential of Garrett Jones and Pedro Alvarez.  There is also a note in there about Paul Maholm altering his pre-game routine to conserve his energy for later innings.

Just heard this now, literally as I was writing this post.  Charlie Wilmouth of BucsDugout is going to be on the FanGraphs Audio podcast (they mention it at the end of the linked episode) on Thursday.

I’m not quite sure what it is about this pirates administration, but I think they have a tendency to get caught up in the moment and speak a bit more freely than they should be.  The latest example of this, Frank Coonelly today says that “2010 is the beginning of the next dynasty of the Pirates.”  Really?  I truly believe this team is heading in the right direction, but Dynasty?  As they say on NFL PrimeTime, Come on, Man!  Edit: I forgot to note this originally, but in that same post, Chuck Finder also adds that Neal Walker is being turned into a super-utility player, something I’ve speculated about in the past.

Finally, something I really enjoyed seeing this week was this tweet from Rob Biertempfel about the energy CF Andrew McCutchen gives this team.  Looking back to when he was called up last year, and that was expected of him at that time, he has met or exceeded all of it.  Its easy to dream on how great a player this kid can be, and I’m glad to hear that he’s the one providing the team its energy.

Note: I’m using Baseball America’s top 10 prospects for ordering, and have placed my “honorable mentions” at the end of part 2.  As a point of clarification, those honorable mentions are not (necessarily) numbers 11,12,13,etc, just a number of other prospects not in the BA top 10 who I wanted to write a few words about.

1. Pedro Alvarez

When you look at the Pirates system, there is Pedro Alvarez, then everyone else.  Not that there aren’t other promising prospects, its just that Pedro’s potential is so great, it outshines everything else in the system.  Alvarez is a slugging third baseman who was drafted in the 1st round by the Pirates in June of 2008.  He would miss the remainder of that season in a contract dispute and made his professional debut in 2009.  Prior to Spring training last year, it was reported he was out of shape, and after a slow start at High A Lynchburg, there were some concerns that he may be slower to develop than everyone was expecting.  Pedro would eventually turn it on and be promoted AA, finishing with a total line for the season of .288/.378/.535.  He would also slug 27 home runs and add 32 doubles over 542 PA in 2009.

As we began this off season, there were concerns his body would prevent him from staying at third and instead force him to move across the diamond to first base in order to get to Pittsburgh.  He has spent the offseason training at the Atheletes’ Performance Institute which should lead to him reporting for spring training in much better shape than last year, and hopefully, a very productive 2010 from the young slugger.  I expect his 2010 to look much like last years Pirates rookie sensation, Andrew McCutchen.  He will wow people in the spring, start the year at AAA Indianapolis, get called up in June or July, and compete for the rookie of the year.

If this comes to fruition, the only question left to be answered will be if he can stay at the hot corner for years to come.  Having seen him play in person once last season in Altoona (granted, very small sample size), he looked sluggish at third and didn’t seem to have the kind of range you’d like to see in your everyday third basemen.  So I’m skeptical of his ability to stay there long term, and doubt he’ll ever win a gold glove or post impressive UZR/150 numbers.  But I’m not an expert, and all the prospect gurus seem to think he’ll have enough leather to stay at third for at least a few years before moving across the diamond to first base, which is good enough for me.

2. Jose Tabata

Jose Tabata is a very interesting case.  If it weren’t for Andrew McCutchen’s ominous presence in center field at PNC Park for the foreseeable future, I’d be a lot higher on him than I am.  But we can’t just ignore McCutchen’s existence, which means that in order for Tabata to come to Pittsburgh, he has to play a corner outfield position.  The problem here is that the ideal corner outfielder has considerably more power than Tabata has ever shown in the minor leagues.  Case in point; In 2009 split between AA and AAA, Tabata managed a grand total of 5 home runs.  On the other hand, Tabata has been playing at levels above his age for his entire minor league career (Tabata will start 2010, his age 21 season, at AAA).  In addition, power is often one of the last things to develop for a prospect, so there is at least some hope that Tabata’s power numbers will come along as he ages.  One last thing to keep in mind with Tabata before we move on.  Pirates’ GM Neal Huntington has publicly stated that he prefers to have a center field type defender manning the gigantic patch of grass that is left field at PNC Park.  Think Nyjer Morgan and Andrew McCutchen for some context of what this kind of defensive alignment looks like.  If Tabata’s power never develops, but his defense in left is far, far above average, his overall value in terms of runs and wins against replacement could wind up being in the positives which could justify an outfield with Tabata in left, McCutchen in center, and someone who can mash in right.

3. Tony Sanchez

Tony Sanchez was drafted by the Pirates #4 overall out of Boston College this past June and the pick was widely criticized as being a reach.  Sanchez was quick to sign and went on to make a rather impressive professional debut in 2009.  Spending most of his time at low A West Virginia, Sanchez posted a .409 OBP and a .949 OPS.  While only time will tell if his numbers at the plate will translate as he moves to higher levels of the minor leagues and eventually to the bigs, the pro debut certainly gives me reason to believe in Sanchez.  In addition to the bat, Sanchez is considered to be very advanced defensively as a catcher.  With such a small professional sample size, there is only so much analysis we can do on Sanchez at this point, but as the 2010 season moves along, Sanchez may very well be one of the most interesting names to watch.  He will likely start the year at high A.  If he hits well there, moves up to AA and does the same, we could easily see Sanchez as the starting catcher sometime in 2011.  On the other hand, if at some point this year the bat starts to flounder, we might be waiting a bit longer to see Sanchez behind the plate for the Pirates.

4. Brad Lincoln

At number 4 we find the first pitcher among the Pirates top prospects, Brad Lincoln.  Lincoln was the Bucs #1 pick in 2006 but missed all of 2007 due to Tommy John surgery on his right elbow.  He came back in 2008, but really seemed to breakout this past summer, regaining his pre-surgery form.  He excelled in Altoona for most of the summer before a late season call-up to AAA Indy.  After the call-up to Indy he did struggle a bit, but not so much to make me overly concerned.  Lincoln’s best pitch coming out of college was his curve ball, and while I didn’t see him pitch this year, it’s been said that the life on his curve was back this season, which is good news for his long term outlook.  He works his fastball in the 90-95 range, mixing in his plus curve and his change-up as well.  The 2 knocks on Lincoln are that he doesn’t get enough ground balls and that he allows too many home runs.  Both are, in theory at least, symptoms of him not working down in the zone enough.  If he can resolve that issue, its quite possible he’ll be on the hill at PNC this summer as soon as June or July.

5. Chase D’Arnaud

Chase D’Arnaud is the eventual heir to the middle infield throne held for so long by Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson.  Where he ends up playing when he gets to Pittsburgh probably depends as much on need as it does on D’Arnaud’s ability, as he can play short, second, or even third base if needed.  D’Arnaud handles the bat quite well for a middle infielder, posting a .398 OBP and an .852 OPS in 2009 split between West Virginia and Lynchburg, his first full season of pro ball.  In addition to the bat, D’Arnaud also showed decent speed in ‘09 by stealing 31 bases on 39 tries.  While he may still be 2 or more season away from being in a Pirates uniform, there seems to be plenty of optimism about his ability to be a productive infielder for the Buccos for a long time once he makes it to Pittsburgh.

6. Starling Marte

Marte is, far and away, the least major league ready of the 6 prospects I’ve dug into in part 1.  He was a 2007 international free agent signing(relatively cheaply at $85K) out of the Dominican Republic and made his North American debut in 2009.  The problem with profiling a guy like Marte is that I have no idea what to make of his 2007 and 2008 numbers in the Dominican Summer League.  But taking those away leaves only one season, 54 games, played at low A West Virginia, and frankly that’s not a lot to go on.  For what it’s worth, everyone who knows about these things is really high on Marte, and all indications are that he will continue to show more and more power as he continues to develop.  He’s a bit of a free swinger, so his walk rate, and in turn his OBP is a bit lower than what you’d like to see.  This is a habit, though, that many players from the Dominican exhibit early in their pro careers, so its pretty easy to assume he’ll eventually learn a bit more patience at the plate.  Overall, I’d expect to see Marte as a prospect for several years to come, but he may eventually be a shining example of what a small investment in Latin America can yield.

That’s it for today, but I expect to get part 2 finished and published in a couple of days, so look for that coming soon.

How much does his high strikeout rate (129 Ks in 542 PAs) affect your opinion of him as a prospect? Do his struggles at Lynchburg still worry you? When do you expect to see him in Pittsburgh?

I guess it’s not fair if I don’t answer these questions myself; I have downgraded my expectations for him just a little bit after this year. I think he’s probably headed for a career in which he’s a little more one-dimensional (that is, power oriented) at the plate than we had originally hoped; maybe falling somewhere between Carlos Pena and Prince Fielder. That’s not a bad thing. Obviously both of those players provide the sort of thump that the Pirates need desperately even if they don’t generally hit for a high batting average. I think we’ll probably see him next year, maybe around June or July, but not before then because he’s got to prove he can hit Triple-A pitching without flailing at pitches out of the strike zone.

I find the question interesting, and thought I’d post my thoughts here rather than have them buried in the comments over on his blog.  For reference, here is his baseball-reference page with all his minor league numbers so far.

Do his struggles at Lynchburg still worry you?

In short, no.  I was worried about the struggles at Lynchburg when he was first promoted to AA and was struggling there for the first few weeks.  But once he found his second wind and began mashing the ball all over the place, I stopped worrying about what he did in A ball.

How much does his high strikeout rate (129 Ks in 542 PAs) affect your opinion of him as a prospect?

Certainly, the strikeouts aren’t a good thing. On the other hand, almost all power hitters have high K rates.  As long as he is drawing walks as well, which he is, I’m not too concerned.  Pat uses the strikeouts to make comps of Prince Fielder and Carlos Pena and while I don’t agree with Pena, I think Fielder is a perfect comp.  Pedro should wind up as a .280/.380/.550 player who hits 35-40 jacks a year.  Those are almost exactly Prince’s career averages.

When do you expect to see him in Pittsburgh?

Sometime around the all-star break next year sounds about right to me.  First, as Pat mentions, Pedro is going to have to prove he can hit AAA pitching.  But also, because his glove is a question mark.  This can go one of two ways, depending on what kind of condition he is in when he reports to spring training next year.  If he reports in good shape, he’s going to have to prove to management that the conditioning paid off and that he can stick at third base with the glove.  Conversely, if the body doesn’t get any better, he’s going to take some period of time to adjust to the other side of the diamond.  As I’ve written before, I think he winds up as a first baseman.  Considering how much a position change will deflate his value, that, not the strikeout or the slow start at Lynchburg, is the biggest disappointment of his inaugural professional season.