There has been a banishment of sorts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania over the past month or so. Now before anyone goes insane, hopefully no one calls 911 because no one is really missing, that is referring to critics of a certain Pittsburgh Pirate. These people have not truly gone missing, as there still exists a plethora of Pedro Alvarez critics, but Alvarez has done plenty as of late for the Pirates to help carry their offense and silence his critics. Alvarez has quickly upped his numbers and his critics are nowhere to be found as compared to when he is struggling and they like to use him as the whipping boy.

When Alvarez is not playing well, Pittsburgh blames him for everything that has gone wrong. It's his fault the Pirates lost, his fault they did not pitch well, and his fault global warming is always a hot topic in politics. Okay, maybe that last thing was a lie because Alvarez has nothing to do with politics, but that is what it seems like when he is taking all the blame for the Pirates woes. Keep in mind that they really have not had many woes in 2015 because the Pirates hold one of baseball's best records.

Now it is perfectly fair to say that Alvarez's defense has been bad in 2015 because he leads all first basemen in errors. While he is a professional, it is Alvarez's first year starting and playing first base. That's not to be confused as an excuse for Alvarez, but keeping in mind that it his first year, anyone knows he could improve his defense in future seasons. But regardless of how bad the defense is from Alvarez at first base, there remains one huge asset that Alvarez does carry with him. That asset would be the offensive potential and production at the plate that Alvarez has.

Alvarez once led the National League, along with Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, with 36 home runs just two seasons ago. Alvarez has the power potential where he can carry a team offensively and put up big power numbers. While Alvarez was hitting around .230 for most of the first half of the season, he has found a way to up that number with his recent tear. And with the power potential, one thing a number of Pedro Alvarez's critics do not seem to understand, is that power hitters are not going to always hit consistently. Not many power hitters hit .300 with 30-40 home runs in a single year. They do exist, but people do not understand that Alvarez is not a Mike Trout where he can go out and produce near or above a .300 batting average along with 30 homers or more.

But thanks to this tear, Alvarez's average has gone up and he is currently batting .252 with an OPS of .778. One thing that has helped Alvarez along is the production he has provided over the past seven games played. In his last seven games, Alvarez is batting .381 with two homers and six runs batted in during that span. Alvarez has also had an OPS of over 1,000 in that time with a .409 on-base percentage and a .667 slugging percentage in that string of games.

While that is just a small sample size, there is a larger sample size that suggests Alvarez is heating up and staying hot just at the best time possible for the Pirates. In his last 30 games, Alvarez has provided seven longballs with 21 RBI's. He also has an OPS of .897 in that time. Alvarez has been quietly carrying the Pittsburgh offense in the past several weeks but no one has a thing to say about that. It's impossible to figure out why that is, especially when phone lines are lit up on Pittsburgh sports talk radio when Alvarez is playing bad, but when he is playing good, the lines seem to be dead.

Alvarez will end up hitting about 25 homers or so when the 2015 Pittsburgh Pirates season does conclude. Now, surely, that will not be good enough numbers to some because of the errors he made at first base or some other foolish reason. But when the Pirates have a Cardinal killer, which Alvarez is, there is not much to not like about him outside of his defense. Yeah, he's a streaky hitter but that streaky side to him has manifested into some great production, especially in the playoffs, from Alvarez.

Alvarez critics will hate hearing all of this but the numbers do not lie. But what remains true about Alvarez and baseball as a sport is that patience must be exercised. The potential Alvarez carries with his bat can carry the Pirates and he has proven that time and time again. Critics will not say that because they clearly lack the patience with Alvarez, but that is why Clint Hurdle is managing the Pirates and not Pedro Alvarez's critics. The difference is that Hurdle knows exactly what he has in Alvarez, which is more than what could be said of his critics.