Pedro Alvarez is one of the greatest baseball players in Vanderbilt history. Alvarez ranks sixth in our countdown of 100-greatest Commodores we've covered.
Honors and awards: 2006 first-team All-American (Baseball America)
2006 National Freshman of the Year (Rivals)
2006 first-team Freshman All-American (BA, Collegiate Baseball)
2006 SEC Freshman of the Year
2006 first-team All-SEC
2006 All-SEC Tournament
2006 All-Atlanta Regional
2006 SEC Player of the Week (April 17)
2006 SEC Freshman of the Week (March 13)
2006 National Player of the Week (April 17)
2006 Team USA selection
2007 first-team All-American (BA, NCBWA, Rivals)
2007 Golden Spikes finalist
2007 first-team All-SEC
2007 All-SEC Tournament
2007 SEC Tournament MVP
2007 SEC Hitter of the Week (Week 1)
2007 National Hitter of the Week (Week 1)
2008 first-team All-SEC
In the VU record book: Single-season hits: tied-second (105 in 2007)
Single-season runs scored: tied-third and tied-seventh (76 in 2007, 70 in 2006)
Single-season home runs: second and tied-seventh (22 in 2006, 18 in 2007)
Single-season RBIs: tied-eighth (68 in 2007)
Career runs scored: fourth (191)
Career home runs: tied-first (49)
Before VU: Was a 2005 Louisville Slugger All-American at New York's Horace Mann High, where he was the Louisville Slugger and Gatorade Player of the Year for the state. Led Horace Mann to the 2004 Ivy League Championship and held the school's career records for batting average, homers, RBIs, slugging percentage, on-base percentage and walks. Baseball America ranked him as the 97th-best pro prospect for the draft; the Red Sox selected him in Round 14. Was a four-year starter and three-year captain.
Freshman (2006): Played 64 games, starting 63, for a 38-27 (16-14 SEC) team that finished second in the Atlanta Regional. Fielded .910 in 178 chances. In SEC games, Alvarez hit .361/.462/.648, with seven home runs, 27 RBIs and 33 runs. Broke the then-school record with 22 homers. Had 22 multi-hit games and 13 multi-RBI games. Made the all-regional team in the Atlanta Regional of the NCAA Tournament after going 5-for-15 with three home runs, three RBIs and four runs scored. Hit two homers with six RBIs and five runs scored in the SEC Tournament. Was intentionally walked seven times and had five three-walk games. Had seven home runs in the last 11 games, including two vs. South Carolina in the regular season. Was 2-for-4 with three runs scored in a game vs. LSU. Had a season-high four hits, including a home run, vs. Lipscomb. Had five RBIs in a single game three times: Georgia, Lipscomb and Austin Peay. Was the National Player of the Week by multiple outlets after hitting six homers in a four-game stretch during which he was 9-for-18 with seven runs scored; that also included a game-winning single vs. Georgia. Was 5-for-12 with two doubles and three runs scored in the Auburn series. Was SEC Freshman of the Week after a 7-for-18 week that included two homers, two doubles and five RBIs; that encompassed a key homer against Ole Miss.
Sophomore (2007): Alvarez played 66 games (65 starts) for a 54-13 (22-8) team that won the SEC regular season and tournament titles, and finished second to Michigan in the Nashville Regional. Fielded .917 in 178 chances. Started all 30 SEC games, hitting .342/.417/.533 with five home runs, 25 RBIs and 27 runs. Had 29 multi-hit and 20 multi-RBI games. Had a 24-game hitting streak and had at least one hit in 58 contests. Was 13-for-24 (.524) with two homers, three doubles and eight RBIs as the SEC Tournament, of which he was named MVP. Was 4-for-10 with a double and two RBIs in the LSU series. Was 6-for-12 with two homers, four runs scored and two RBIs in the Auburn series. Was 9-for-14 (.643) with three doubles, seven RBIs and five runs in the Florida series. Had four hits in a single game vs. Kentucky. Had a game-winning two-run triple vs. Austin Peay in the regular season. Had three-run, inside-the-park homer in a win over Arkansas. Was 6-for-12 with a double, two homers and three RBIs in the Xavier series. Was 4-for=5 with two doubles, a triple and three runs scored in another game vs. Austin Peay. Was 5-for-13 with two homers, four RBIs and five runs in the Ohio series. Was the National Hitter of the Week after going 7-for-14 with two doubles, a triple, a homer and five RBIs in the Houston College Classic. Led Team USA with a .315 average, seven homers and 30 RBIs.
Junior (2008): Played in 40 games, all starts, for a 41-22 (15-14) team that finished third at the Tempe Regional. His season was abbreviated due to a broken hamate bone suffered in February, which kept him out until April 1. Fielded .903 in 103 chances. In 21 SEC games, Alvarez hit .400/.481/.700 with five home runs, 18 RBIs and 25 runs. Had a two-out RBI double in the eighth to lead VU to a 3-2 win over Kentucky.
Post-VU: Pittsburgh took Alvarez second overall in the 2008 MLB Draft. Alvarez hit .236/.310/.447 across 901 Major League games, but hasn't played in the Majors since 2018. His best year was in 2013, when he led the National League with 36 homers, drove in 100 runs, participated in the All-Star Game and posted a 3.3 WAR.
Final thoughts, and why I ranked him where I did: No player to play under coach Tim Corbin exhibited more brute home-run power than Pedro Alvarez, who frequently hit them longer than anyone I remember at VU.
My favorite Alvarez story: Due to a complete absence of competent candidates, I was VU's mid-week radio baseball announcer in 2006. One day, in the midst of one of those winter periods where the Nashville sky turns gun-metal gray for two months straight, VU hosted a mid-week game against a now-forgotten opponent when Alvarez, hitting from the left side as he always did sent a ball skyward. I lost sight of the ball but looked back at the infield and saw Alvarez in his home-run trot at which point I said something brilliant like, "Well folks, I didn't see exactly where the ball went, but apparently Pedro Alvarez has homered."
Turns out Alvarez had hit the ball over the batter's eye in center, which is about 405 feet from home plate and probably 30 feet high. I don't recall anyone hitting there before or after that.
There were two knocks on Alvarez. First, he struck out a decent amount, although 19.4 percent of the time (that was his career mark) certainly wasn't excessive for someone with his power. (He also walked 15.4 percent of the time.) He took some criticism for defense, and while it wasn't terrific (he fielded .911 for his career), he also had a strong arm and turned in a decent number of borderline-highlight-reel plays. Both turned into bigger issues at the MLB level (a negative-7.2 defensive WAR and a 28.7-percent K rate) but you could live with both because the combination of monster power and on-base ability were probably as strong as any of his contemporaries in college baseball.
Those of you who have seen me rank VU baseball players before are probably surprised I've rated Alvarez this low. There are more baseball players to come and as of a few years ago, I'd considered him the best ever at VU.
Why have I changed my mind? Run-scoring context. And if you don't care about a deeper dive into stats, I suggest you skip the next four paragraphs.
Runs scored across college baseball, on average, were up by totals of 3, 4 and 11 percent during Alvarez's career. For hitters with at least 298 plate appearances during Corbin's tenure, Alvarez's offensive seasons on a runs-produced-per-27-outs-made (RC/27) rank sixth, eighth and 24th. Adjust them for run scoring, and they rank ninth, 12th and 43rd.
On the other hand, I wonder if there's noise in those numbers. All the RC/27 runs estimates are prorated for how many runs a team scores. Each of his teams scored about 2-4 percent less than the formula said they "should have" scored, whereas Bryan Reynolds (who had the best offensive season at VU, per that formula) had his stellar season in 2016, when the Commodores scored 22 percent more runs than they "should" have. Reynolds hit .330/.461/.603 that season, which came out to a RC/27 of 12.41 and an ARC/27 of 13.14 after an additional 6 percent bump for run-scoring environment. Alvarez, meanwhile, saw his .385/463/.684 stat line of 2007 translate into a RC/27 of 10.93, then, a 10.59 ARC/27.
My point is not to invalidate anyone's accomplishments, but just to point out that there's more wiggle room within some of the metrics I've used to rate players than I wish existed. That's inevitable in 60-something game seasons when using a formula designed for MLB, which plays 162 games. It's why I've put Alvarez over Reynolds though he "created" just 0.05 more runs per 27 outs on an adjusted basis despite the fact that Reynolds was a much more valuable defender, played on teams that won more, and had 118 more plate appearances.
Look at the slash lines: though RC/27 rates them essentially the same, Alvarez hit .349/.451/.658 for his career, while Reynolds hit .329/.413/.508. And yes, Reynolds played when run-scoring was "deflated" by 14, 8 and 6 percent between 2014-16, but I don't doubt for a second that Alvarez was the better hitter.
There was also the way in which Alvarez tattooed SEC pitching. Take the worst individual season of each of Alvarez's three "slash" lines: a batting average of .342, an on-base mark of .417 and a .533 slugging percentage. That's a good line for any player in any era of SEC baseball and I'm 99.9 percent positive that no VU player under Corbin turned in a better career OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) than Alvarez did in league play for his career. That doesn't include the conference tournament, during which Alvarez was picked to the All-SEC Tournament team twice and named its MVP once.
The long list for "best player I've covered," when I looked at things in detail, came down to nine people. While I eventually narrowed that list to three players (and they've been the same three players from the beginning), I think there are three more that have a solid (though lesser) argument to be in that conversation also. Alvarez marks the beginning of that middle list. If you'd like to stay out of the deep weeds of run-scoring context, drop him into any era of baseball at VU and let him have another go at a three-year career, it's reasonable to think he could have topped the list.
