Pedro Alvarez and Dick Stuart

Perhaps no Pittsburgh Pirate in my recent memory, not even Barry Bonds, has stirred so much debate, pro and con, as has Pedro Alvarez.  I am not going to discuss Pedro's future, or what should the Pirates do with him going forward, both short- and long-term.  Those are topics for another day and will no doubt be discussed in the Blog at some future point.

Instead, I am going to take another approach here.  Pedro, with his jaw-dropping power and jaw-dropping fielding prowess, has often been compared with former Pirate Dick Stuart, especially since his move from third base to first base.  A question was raised in a Facebook forum just this morning, "Is Pedro the next Dick Stuart?"

So, I decided to open up a spread sheet and make a comparison between the two.

The numbers you will see below reflect Stuart's career only during his five seasons as a Pirate.  He went on, of course, to a ten year career with five other teams, most notably, the Boston Red Sox.  Alvarez' numbers are current through yesterday's game against the Rockies.

Here you go:

	Dick Stuart	Pedro Alvarez
Seasons	5	6
Plate Appearances	2.213	2,765
Hits	550	587
BA	0.273	0.243
HR	117	130
RBI	390	399
OPS	0.839	0.750
Strike Outs	483	806
Walks	158	254
K:W Ratio	3.06 to 1	3.17 to 1
Errors	90	131
All-Star Teams	1	1

In all honesty, I don't know what to make of these.  If you look at HR and RBI, which one could argue is what the Pirates have paid these two to do, a slight edge goes to Pedro.  Other categories favor, slightly, Stuart.  OPS is clearly in Big Stu's favor.  The errors tell a very bad story for both of them, especially Pedro.

Here are a couple of other stats for you who like modern analytics.  Stuart's WAR (Wins Above Replacement player) for his entire ten year career was 7.8.  Alvarez' WAR for his six years and counting career is 5.0.

In his career, Stuart made $278,500.  Alvarez has thus far earned $14,350,000.  That ought to get the old-timers riled up.

As I said, I have a hard time drawing any conclusions here.  The rest of you all can have at it.

A Jim Brosnan Follow-up

A few days ago, I wrote in this blog of the death of baseball player turned author Jim Brosnan.

As a result, I received an email from a friend of mine, Nick Frankart, a former Pittsburgher who lives in Long Beach, California.  Nick recounted a story about writing a letter to Brosnan in 2007 wherein he asked Brosnan to relate any special "remembrances about the Bucs, either baseball related or otherwise".

Nick scanned a copy of the hand written note he received from Brosnan.  The handwriting is difficult to read, so I will just transcribe it here:

"Dear Nick,

"Thanks for your letter of August 7.  Sorry to be tardy in reply.  Hope you enjoy the books.

"As to memories of Forbes field, I treasure the time DICK STUART hit a home run over the left field scoreboard that cleared the tall trees behind it and landed in Schenley Park beyond it.  

"Two pilots landing a plane claim to have seen the ball pass by the cockpit window. Later that night at Danny's Restaurant downtown, they told the bartender the story.  Danny bought a round all around."

Thanks to Nick for sharing this with me, and I know that he will have no problem with me sharing it with you.  

The letter brought to mind memories of my Dad, who would often visit Danny's (now long gone from the Pittsburgh scene, but which I believe was on Grant Street near the old Carlton House Hotel, where visiting baseball teams often stayed while visiting Pittsburgh) on his lunch hour.  He would tell us stories over the diner table about what visiting National League ballplayers he had seen that day at lunch.