F/F SPOTLIGHT: Pedro Alvarez

In the 2014 Baseball Forecaster, we offered the following summary of Pedro Álvarez (3B, PIT):

Adam Dunn 2.0, or something more? When you have this kind of power, any reduction in K or GB is good news; the latter drove this HR spike. That may not be the end of the growth, either: xBA says that a BA over .250 isn't out of the question. And if September's 76% contact rate sticks, then.... UP: 40 HR, .260 BA.

Through the first half of 2014, Alvarez has met a couple of the key benchmarks we set forth in that offseason writeup: he has held on to (most of) those late-2013 contact gains, and he has concurrently posted a career-best fly ball rate. Given those two data points, it seems as if our out-on-a-limb projection of "UP: 40 HR, .260 BA"...

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