Pedro Alvarez is more neutral than Switzerland. If you average his wins above replacement numbers at Fangraphs (0.1) and Baseball Reference (-0.4), you get pretty close to a big, fat objective zero for the number of games his hapless defense and potent offense have combined to win or lose for the Pirates this season.
Turn on talk radio or the local TV stations’ Sunday night sports debate/thunderdome shows, though, and he becomes the most polarizing figure in Pittsburgh sports.
On one side, his apologists point to every home run he hits as a trump card that somehow justifies all the bad things he does on the baseball field.