More on Dariel Álvarez's conversion to reliever

SARASOTA, Fla. - Less than two weeks after standing at his spring training locker and saying the idea of pitching wasn't on his mind, Dariel Álvarez will stand on a mound at the minor league complex and make the conversion to reliever.

Manager Buck Showalter confirmed today that Álvarez agreed to try pitching, a role he filled for parts of three seasons in Cuba before the Orioles signed him as an outfielder.

"Alvy needs to get down to start the pitching program," Showalter said. "He's going to start a very similar plan that Mychal Givens was on. We talked to him for probably 20 minutes yesterday. We've been talking to him off and on for about a year.

"You can't go from A to Z with that. The first thing we're going to do is test him and see where his strength is, something they all do with all the guys before the season, halfway through the season, the end of the season. Make sure the strength is there and that he doesn't have any problems. He'll start the program, everything.

"It's depressing to him. He thinks he's ready to pitch in a major league game right now, but we're going to start with it slow. With all the people we had going on here, we knew he was going to end up there, so we wanted to put him in with (minor league medical coordinator) Dave Walker down there and give him the attention he needs."

Álvarez won't put his bats in storage.

"He's excited about it," Showalter said. "He's still going to probably DH some to keep him available for something that's very important to him in the offseason. And he wants to be able to go back to it if it doesn't work out. Where he starts out, it will be one of the full-season clubs, so where it is we should know by the end of spring. He'll be pitching in games before the spring is over.

"He's going to be throwing a lot more. We just want to make sure we don't get ahead of ourselves with it. We've got a template for it with Mychal, so it's very similar to that."

The Orioles have spent the past few months trying to convince Álvarez that pitching was his best path to the majors. The talks picked up in spring training.

"We just laid it out - here's what we see, here's what we're thinking and what do you think?'" Showalter said. "He's got to embrace it. This is something that he's wanted to do, but the big thing for him is that he didn't want to leave the offensive part of it behind. We were trying to tell him that the focus he's got to have on it.

"He's pretty confident about his pitching. So was Mychal. I think Mychal was kind of like, 'I can do that anytime. I want to play this out as a player.' He's a better hitter than Mychal was.

"It's tough because he's leaving a year where he had 38 doubles. He's handled himself pretty well offensively, but looking at the landscape ... And we don't want his optional status to come and go because someone is going to do this at some point. We've got this year and next year to option him. I'm hoping that in a perfect world he's knocking on the door as a pitcher next year."

The "tradeoff" is letting Álvarez, 28, continue to bat as the designated hitter when he's not pitching. Showalter said the at-bats won't negatively influence the conversion.

"It won't because of the schedule that we're going to set up," he said. "The question that you've got to ask yourself is, 'If he's hitting .400 at the break,' which you know is going to happen. It's going to happen. He thinks he can do both and impact a major league team. We'll see. He'll be fun to watch."

Álvarez made 22 relief appearances over three seasons in Cuba in 2006, 2007 and 2009. He was 1-4 with a 3.62 ERA in 32 1/3 innings, allowing only one home run, walking 12 and striking out 18. The Orioles will put him in the bullpen.

"It will be a lot easier to monitor that and to get him the work he's going to need," Showalter said. "Hopefully, he'll get on an every-other-day program. He'll DH on the days he doesn't pitch."

Executive vice president Dan Duquette said some teams scouted Álvarez as a pitcher before the Orioles gave him an $800,000 bonus in July 2013. Álvarez is 8-for-32 with a home run in 14 major league games and went 0-for-11 this spring.

Álvarez fell further back on the depth chart with the Orioles taking Aneury Tavárez and Anthony Santander in the Rule 5 draft, trading for Seth Smith and signing Logan Schafer, Craig Gentry, Michael Bourn and Chris Dickerson to minor league deals.

"He has some experience as a pitcher professionally in Cuba and he has a good arm, so he's going to see if he can develop that talent and see if he can establish himself as a major league pitcher," Duquette said.

"He'd like to continue his hitting and develop his pitching. That's what he agreed to do, so we'll see how it goes."