Much of the focus in the run-up to tonight’s Wild Card Game has understandably focused on Edinson Volquez. This is understandable. The Royals started James Shield, the A’s started Jon Lester, the Giants are starting Madison Bumgarner, and the Pirates are starting Edinson Volquez. Volquez sticks out like a sore thumb in that quartet, and his presence is even more remarkable because the Pirates more or less chose him to start the game. Throw in his year-to-year improvement, his weird peripherals, and you’ve got quite a story and it’s obvious why Volquez is a key conversation point heading into this game
Here’s the thing, though: the Pirates are not in the playoffs because Francisco Liriano was great this year (he wasn’t), nor are they in the playoffs because Gerrit Cole was great this year (he wasn’t). In fact, the Pirates being in the playoffs has nothing at all to do with their pitching staff. The 2014 Pittsburgh Pirates are in the playoffs because they are really, really good at hitting baseballs and getting to first base and scoring runs. It’s true that Volquez isn’t the Pirates’ best or second best pitcher, but focusing on that sort of skirts the fact that the Pirates’ best two pitchers are capable of laying eggs in a big game, too. This Pirate team is keyed on the offense. Let’s talk about that.
Now, you’ve likely seen at some point this week that the Pirates and Giants have the second and third best offenses in the National League, respectively. This is true if you go by wRC+, which is what you should be using to evaluate offenses. It’s also awfully misleading. The Dodgers had the best wRC+ in the NL this year, with 111 (wRC+ is scaled to 100 as average across MLB, so an offense with a wRC+ of 111 is 11% better than an average offense). The Pirates were second with a wRC+ of 108. The Giants were third at 101. The Giants’ offense was as close to the Brewers (wRC+ of 94, seventh in the NL) as it was to the Pirates. If you want talk about National League offenses, there’s the Pirates and Dodgers and then there’s everyone else.
Talking about the team as a whole, the Pirates tied with the Mets for the highest walk rate in the National League this year (this is all just reshuffling the FanGraphs chart from above). They were fourth in isolated power and third in home runs, but it’s worth remembering that those stats aren’t park-adjusted and that the Rockies exist and Coors Field is a ridiculous offensive environment (the Rockies hit 29 more home runs than the NL’s second-best homer squad, the Cubs, and they hit 30 more than the Pirates). They also cut way back on strikeouts, tying for 11th in the league with the Dodgers in strikeout rate. Last year’s Pirates were interesting offensively because they had a ton of power, but they struck out a lot and didn’t walk nearly as much, so they were often one-dimensional and pretty easily contained. This year’s Pirates can’t be boxed in so neatly; they get on base and they hit the ball over the fence.
The thing about this Pirate lineup that really sets it apart, though, is that it’s absolutely relentless. Assuming they go with a lineup similar to what they usually use against lefties tonight, they’ll look like this for the Wild Card Game (wRC+ in parenthesis, and remember, 100 is average):
- Josh Harrison (137)
- Jordy Mercer (91)
- Andrew McCutchen (168)
- Russell Martin (140)
- Starling Marte (132)
- Neil Walker (130)
- Gaby Sanchez (93)
- Travis Snider (121)
The only two hitters in that lineup below average are Jordy Mercer and Gaby Sanchez, and both of them perform significantly better against left-handed pitching than they do against lefties: Mercer has an .803 OPS and a 127 wRC+ against southpaws, while Sanchez is at .746 and 111, respectively. In fact, every single Pirate starter tonight has an above average wRC+ against left-handed pitching, even though some of Bucs hit quite a bit worse against lefties than righties (Neil Walker, Russell Martin for some reason) and some of the sample sizes (Travis Snider in particular) are awfully small.
Where things get really fun, if you’re a Pirate fan, is if we take that lineup and just flip the switch from “full season” to “second half.” Let’s do that.
- Josh Harrison (151)
- Jordy Mercer (108)
- Andrew McCutchen (148)
- Russell Martin (144)
- Starling Marte (178)
- Neil Walker (138)
- Gaby Sanchez (91)
- Travis Snider (149)
Look at those numbers. Since the All-Star Break, Andrew McCutchen — arguably the best hitter in the National League — has been the fourth best hitter on the Pirates and it’s not because he’s hit poorly. We as Pirate fans have this ridiculous habit or arguing over who the team’s “MVP” is, and we’ve somehow blitzed past Starling Marte this year. With a few more plate appearances, Marte would’ve been the second best hitter in the big leagues after the All-Star Break (behind Buster Posey but we’re not talking about him yet). Marte’s triple-slash line sat at .255/.328/.385 at the end of July when he missed 12 games with his second concussion of the season. When he came back, he went on a tear. In 49 games since August 5th, Marte’s hitting .354/.406/.569 with 64 hits, 13 doubles, a triple, and eight home runs. That raised his stat line to .291/.356/.453, which is better in all respects than it was last year.
In fact, I think that it’s probably Marte and Mercer that have made the most difference for the Pirates in the second half against left-handed pitching. This seems like a long time ago now, but the Pirates only saw three lefties in their first 42 games and 11 total before the All-Star Break. They had their share of trouble with those lefties, too, (I count a 5-6 record in those 11 games), though much of that was likely due to sample size problems. If you remember, the Pirates came out of the gate in the second half and faced a huge slew of lefties; the Rockies threw three at them, then they saw Hyun-Jin Ryu in LA, then they saw the Rockies again when they Rockies sent three more lefties at them. They didn’t necessarily do poorly as a team in that stretch of games (they won six of nine total and four of the seven started by lefties), but they didn’t fare well at all against middling lefties like Tyler Matzek and Brett Anderson, to say nothing of Ryu.
On the tenth day of that stretch, the Pirates faced Madison Bumgarner. In the first inning, Josh Harrison drew a walk, Jordy Mercer singled him to second, Andrew McCutchen drew a walk, Gaby Sanchez scored Harrison on a sac fly, Neil Walker singled Mercer home, Russell Martin singled McCutchen home, and Gregory Polanco hit a sac fly to score Walker. Seven batters, four runs. In the second inning, Josh Harrison homered off of Bumgarner with one out, and even though Bumgarner settled down after that, he was out of the game after four innings. I don’t want to put too much emphasis on one team/pitcher confrontation (Bumgarner was excellent after that start down the stretch), but the Pirates did very well against a good lefty that day thanks in part to guys like Harrison (who was just starting to heat up again after a slump made it seem like he was coming back to earth) and Mercer (who was just terrible in the season’s early goings) and a week later Startling Marte rejoined them, and the Pirates’ early-season “thing” with lefties hasn’t seemed so much like a “thing” since that game in particular.
I realize that the old trope is that great pitching beats great hitting in the playoffs, but two offenses worse than the Pirates’ offense roughed up two starters better than Madison Bumgarner in last night’s insane AL Wild Card Game (though, then again, that same statement applies if you replace “Pirates” with “Giants” and “Bumgarner” with “Volquez”). I’m obviously biased, but I think that the single strongest point for either team in this game tonight is the Pirate offense. They run eight deep against lefties and can start a rally from pretty much any point in the lineup. Bumgarner isn’t necessarily one for walking a ton of hitters, but the Pirates are excellent at working the count and running pitch counts up (Bumgarner threw 90 pitches in four innings against the Pirates in late July on start after throwing 93 in eight innings against the Phillies). Gaby Sanchez will be the only starter tonight without at least ten home runs (and he’s second in the team in homers off of lefties and leads the team in doubles vs. lefties), which means that while there’s no huge power threat in the lineup the way there was when Pedro Alvarez was mashing, so long as the game is close just about any player on the team is capable of changing the course of events with one swing of the bat. The Brewers know all about this.
Nothing is guaranteed here, of course. The Pirates didn’t score a ton of runs down the stretch and Alex Wood (a young, hard-throwing lefty who is probably a little better than Bumgarner) pitched quite well against them in the game that ultimately ended up being the playoff clincher for the Pirates. They eventually got to Wood, though, and I think they can do the same with Bumgarner. At the very least, it’s hard to knock this offense out of a game, and that’s a reassuring feeling in a one-game playoff with the season on the line.
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