I was at the game tonight and he went to turn a double play and absolutely booted the ball off his glove. It didn’t take a bad hop, he was backing up on the ball. If he can play D he’ll be ok, but as of right now it’s not a great start.

have really paid off for him, he’s been hitting the ball much harder this season as shown by the line drive rate jseiner mentioned…I doubt he’ll maintain a .300 avg but he will definitely produce solid numbers if he can continue hitting the ball as hard as he has the last year and a half, he will absolutely be a league avg or above 2B offensively, and athletically he is more than capable of adjusting to 2B defensively with solid work in the outfield, he won’t become a gold glover or a highlight reel guy but he won’t be a gaping hole in our defense

I’m not sure how much I buy it on a ranking system, but I find it interesting that the Pirates (Pythag to already be at 100 losses) have a Simple Rating Score of -2.1, and the next closest to them at the bottom is the Mariners and Cubs at -0.9. So in terms of that they are more than twice as bad as the next worst team.

If they want to avoid 110 losses next year, they’re certainly going to need Neil Walker to keep it up.

Offense: I agree with what seems to be the consensus here already - he’s not a true talent .300 hitter, but he seems to have genuinely improved as a hitter in the last year and seems to have a knack for squaring up the ball. I could see him being a consistent .275-.290 hitter. He’s not a hacker, as Adam Reynolds says, but he is very aggressive, so my guess is that he’s never going to walk much more than 6-7% of the time. The power has always been legitimate (solidly above average). .280/.325/.450 seems like a decent bet for him going forward.

Defense: I side with those who think he looks pretty terrible at 2B. As Vlad noted, he does not have much range. If, as others suggest, he improves with repetition, I think it will mean becoming a tolerably below-average 2B rather than average or better. I agree with Vlad that he’d probably work out better at 3B. I’ve been advocating moving Alvarez to 1B and Walker to 3B for next year, but I guess the chance that Walker becomes tolerable at 2B warrants seeing him there for another year.

Overall, he looks to me like a very solid player, but not an All-Star type.

I could see him as a .270/.330/.450 type 2B….Not terrible but not a world beater….he’s a really good athlete with some baseball skill.

I see him as a type of player on a Mike Lansing—>Mark Grudzielanek—>Mark Loretta spectrum. Good, not great….a solid player.