The Pittsburgh Pirates’ run production issues are many and varied, and a substantial one looms in the team’s performance against relievers.
As of this writing, the Pittsburgh Pirates rank 29th amongst Major League Baseball’s 30 teams with 3.38 runs per game. The Pirates find themselves at the 25th position in hits per game with 7.71. The club leaves 3.67 runners in scoring position per game, the sixth-most in baseball. They have been outscored by 27 runs on the season, third worst in baseball and second worst in the National League.
Yes, their issues on offense are vast. Signs of encouragement come in fits and spurts, and it is not uncommon for their run creation attack to look vastly different on a game-to-game basis.
Right now, Pittsburgh Pirates hitters look nothing like their 98-win 2015 versions, much less their 2016 lukewarm counterparts.
Part of that is how inept they have been against relief pitchers.
Adjustments Easier Said Than Done
If we put ourselves in the shoes of a major league hitter, we can start to sympathize with them quite a bit. Everyone knows how hard it is to hit a 95 mph fastball, but not as many can appreciate, much less understand, the necessity for a hitter to adjust to completely different pitchers and pitcher styles when a relief pitcher comes in.
We can use the Pittsburgh Pirates’ NL Central rival Chicago Cubs as an example. In the two club’s bout on April 25th – an eventual Cubs win noted as a wonderful pitching performance from Gerrit Cole – the Pirates managed five hits on their way to being shut out. The Cubs starter that night was Kyle Hendricks, a historically soft tossing right-hander who was a Cy Young candidate in 2016.
Hendricks’ advanced billing was accurate, as he did not touch velocity of 88 or above on any of his pitches. He worked in a good mix, to be sure, utilizing his four-seam as well as he could, with a changeups and curveballs that had great separation from his “heat.” Add in a sinking fastball that matches his four-seam in velocity, and you quickly realize that Hendricks relies on deception and separation to make his pitches more effective than they normally would be.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Right now, Pittsburgh Pirates hitters look nothing like their 98-win 2015 versions, much less their 2016 lukewarm counterparts.[/perfectpullquote]So, after toying around with Hendricks for six innings – collecting four hits and two walks while striking out three times – the Pittsburgh Pirates welcomed in Koji Uehara. Another soft tosser, Uehara offered up just two pitches – four-seam and split finger fastballs – yet the Pirates still were futile, with just one hit in Uehara’s otherwise clean inning of work.
And then, the flamethrowers came in.
Hector Rondon pitched the eighth, he of the slider/four seam combo with fantastic velocity that touched 97 mph at one point. He worked around a walk in quick fashion, including a looking strikeout of Josh Bell in six pitches.
Wade Davis came in to close it out, and he did just that – again with two pitches – a four seam and a curve. The Pittsburgh Pirates actually had hard hit outs – all of their batted ball outs in the ninth were tagged at 97+ mph in exit velocity, but went down in order.
If we look at the totality of the pitchers that the Pirates faced, it was a grab bag of stuff and effectiveness. The club went in with a game plan against Hendricks, and the hits just were not falling for them. After six innings of seeing Hendricks’ offerings, they faced another hurler with lower velocity in Uehara, but this time saw a split finger fastball – a notoriously difficult pitch to time and hit with any regularity.
After seven innings of such madness, the Pittsburgh Pirates hitters then had to line up against two sturdy relievers with good velocity. More importantly, these two pitchers had complementary offerings. Rondon utilized the slider with harder break against his four-seam while Davis opted for his curveball.
When you put these pitchers, their stuff, their velocities and their offerings together in sequence, it is no wonder that the Pirates could not get timing down to at least make a game of it after the seventh inning.
They had to adjust on the fly to some very different styles of pitching, and that is a hard thing to do. For any club.
Which would be easy to accept had the Pittsburgh Pirates not shown in years previous that they adapted to relievers as good as – and perhaps better than – any other club in the National League.
Not As Bad In Recent Years
In 2015, the Pittsburgh Pirates run production was, at times, very efficient. While not putting up a high-number of runs, they were able to tag relievers in their first at-bat against them at a much-better rate then they have in 2017 (and 2016 for that matter).
Here’s a look at team-level slash rates against relievers in the batting team’s first time against them. We’ll look at their 2015, 2016 and 2017 numbers while comparing them to the National League as a whole.
[table id=227 /]It is so difficult in today’s baseball to hit relief pitching with any amount of regularity. Relievers are better than ever, and you can point to several names such as Aroldis Chapman, Davis and Dellin Betances as fearsome hurlers who come into the game in a blaze of glory, with their stuff and offerings so difficult to adjust to after a few innings worth of facing a starting pitcher.
This table shows just how difficult this is, as the overall National League numbers here are not overly impressive. In 2015, the Pirates overachieved against relievers when they first came into the game. 2016 saw the club come back to the pack, while the early returns in 2017 have the club falling far below the rest of the senior circuit.
Of course, these are team-level metrics we are looking at. Surely, if we look at individual numbers, it might give us a better idea of who is dragging the club down.
[table id=228 /]Looking at this table, there are a few surprises and some figures that aren’t so surprising at all.
We’ll start with Bell. His slashline against relievers is an ugly one, but perhaps it is one that we should expect from a second-year player in his first full season. There is also a burgeoning track record in play here. Bell had 54 plate appearances against relievers in 2016, posting a .174/.278/.304 slash in the same scenario in 2016.
It could be something as simple as Bell not having seen enough PAs against relievers at this point in his career to guard against lack of adjustment in facing them. With Bell being substituted for defense frequently, he may not get a chance to see more pitches against relievers until Clint Hurdle is comfortable enough to leave him at first late in games.
Gregory Polanco‘s slash against relievers is undoubtedly a surprise, as he put up a .255/.318/.459 line against them in 2016. EIght of his 22 home runs came against relievers, so to see Polanco so inept against them in 2017 is alarming. Ditto for Andrew McCutchen, though he can put up a slightly respectable on-base percentage of .320 in this scenario.
The rest of the Pittsburgh Pirates regulars – Starling Marte excluded – is a hodgepodge of average to great performances, with David Freese and Adam Frazier in particular showing that they have no issues adjusting to a new pitcher.
Being able to adjust to a reliever is a hard thing to do, but the Pirates have shown an ability to do it well a times in recent years.
Improving their ability to adjust will not be the cure-all for their offensive woes, but it would be a hell of a place to start.
After all, better performances against relievers could have turned some of those 2-1 or 1-0 losses into more competitive affairs at the very least.
Image Credit – Daniel Decker Photography
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