Baltimore Orioles Sign Pedro Alvarez

The Baltimore Orioles have signed 29-year-old third baseman Pedro Alvarez to a one-year deal.

The Orioles have signed 29-year-old third baseman Pedro Alvarez to a one-year, $5.75M deal with $1.5M available in performance bonuses.

Alvarez is recently coming off of a six-year stint with the Pittsburgh Pirates where he established himself as a major power hitter with a high strikeout rate. His best year with the Pirates was 2013 when he slashed .233/.296/.473 with 36 home runs and 100 RBI.

Likely, Alvarez will become the Orioles DH nearly full time while Mark Trumbo plays right field. Alvarez should find a lot of success from a power perspective playing in the AL East. He pulls the ball roughly 44% of the time (which is above league average), and as a left-handed hitter, that’s good news when he’s playing a lot of his games in Camden Yards, Fenway Park, and Yankee Stadium, all parks that are top in the MLB for left-handed power.

While Alvarez will likely hit a lot of home runs with the Orioles, it’s doubtful he’ll do much else. He strikes out about as much as Chris Davis does (around 30% of the time), walks on occasion (around 9% of the time) and hits virtually nothing but home runs. He is a career .236 hitter with a career .205 ISO, which means he crushes the ball and that’s about all he does. He will likely slot into the middle of the lineup, likely bumping Jimmy Paredes out of a starting job.

I would project Alvarez to hit .240/.315/.471 with 32 HR, and 84 RBI. I’ll be adding a more detailed projection in my 2016 starting lineup projections.