Bob Walk: Pedro Alvarez's Days At First Could Be Numbered
PITTSBURGH (93-7 The Fan) – Pirates broadcaster Bob Walk joined "The Fan Morning Show" Wednesday to discuss a very eventful Tuesday night matchup between the Pirates and Royals.
The game resulted in a frustrating 3-1 defeat for the Bucs.
Walk was asked about Neil Walker's critical error in the eighth inning, and said the Pirates' defense is a problem.
"We're not where we should be defensively and I think this situation, now we have with Mercer being out, is just going to kind of challenge us even more," said Walk. "So, I would like to try to find some way to fix that, and I really don't know what the answer is."
Walk would love to add an adequate shortstop at the trade deadline to give the defense some help.
"I'm kind of curious to see what kind of moves maybe we're going to make here going down the trading deadline," Walk said. "But I would like, in an ideal world, to have an experienced major league shortstop out there at least until we get Mercer back and I don't know if that's doable or not."
Walk also said that there was confusion and a delay in communication between the Root Sports telecast and Major League Baseball regarding the retraction of Starling Marte's apparent home run in the second inning.
"Our truck always talks to New York on the telephone and they always tell them what's going on," said Walk. "And our guys were put on hold for a long, long, long time, no explanation at all, and then when they finally came back on the phone they actually told them 'no comment.' That was the explanation as to what happened, 'no comment.' I mean, that's absurd."
Finally, Walk said that in light of Pedro Alvarez's defensive struggles and Neal Huntington's comments about his performance being below the line, the writing seems to be on the wall.
"It is what it is," said Walk. "I don't know what they're going to do when this is all over as far as the designated hitter thing, who are they going to choose to put over there? Pedro just has not been able to do the job on defense. You look at his errors and you compare him to other first basemen and there's no comparison, Pedro has really struggled over there. There's no getting around it, there's no way to sugarcoat it or anything. So, as far as what Neal said, it makes me think that they're really close to going in another direction at first base and try to shore up the team defensively."
Walk joins "The Fan Morning Show" every Wednesday at 9:03 a.m.
The interview can be heard here:
