Pittsburgh Pirates Prediction Machine – When the Dust Settles

Welcome to the Pittsburgh Pirates Prediction Machine – a weekly article in which we identify five areas of interest for fans and then make predictions about them.

Last week the Pittsburgh Pirates finished up their West coast road trip with a three game series sweep at San Francisco, then came home to being swept themselves at the hands of the resurgent Miami Marlins.  It was a week of ups and downs, much like our predictions.

Last Week’s Predictions

We thought the Pirates would hit Matt Moore:  The Pirates had not faced Matt Moore before, but have hit well all season long against elite left handed pitching. We said Moore would allow over 1.5 WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) as the Pirates keep the line moving against him.  Well, he did exactly that – walking three and allowing six hits in six innings en route to earning the loss.

We expected the Nova-Cain matchup to be a high scoring affair:  When Ivan Nova faced Matt Cain, it was a battle of two pitchers with high ERAs.   We thought there would be a lot of offense on both sides and that we’d see at least six combined runs on the scoreboard before these two pitchers were done.  Nova gave up 4 and Cain gave up 6 making our prediction correct.

We predicted that Buster Posey would throw out one of the Pittsburgh Pirates top of the order hitters: Posey has an incredible 46% caught-stealing percentage as a catcher, good for tops in the National League.  Even so, we thought the Pirates’ top of the order would try to run on him.  Starling Marte and Josh Harrison barely beat Posey throws but Andrew McCutchen wasn’t so lucky, getting gunned down as he attempted to steal second. We were right about this one.

We thought the Pirates’ speed would play against Miami:  J.T. Realmuto is a good defensive catcher, however we thought the Pirates would be aggressive and steal at least three bases in the Miami series.  They ended up stealing only 1 base and, inexplicably, that was their only attempt in the series.  This made our prediction frustratingly wrong.

We thought Kuhl would continue to win:  The Pirates have done nothing but win when Chad Kuhl starts.  Last week he pitched admirably, allowing only 3 runs (2 earned), but was outdone by David Phelps, a relief pitcher pressed into service as a starter.  The Pirates did not get the W as we expected.

So, last week we went 3 for 5 (three correct and two incorrect predictions).

Predictions for the week of August 22nd.

This week the Pirates host the Houston Astros for three games and then travel to Milwaukee to face the Brewers in a four game set. Given the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the Pittsburgh Pirates right now, it is hard to make any predictions.  But that’s our job, so here we go…

• Josh Bell: How could we not make a prediction about Bell?  He is an amazing hitter and has done very well in his short time with the Pirates, but eventually things normalize, even for the best prospects. We saw Josh Bell’s first MLB strikeout last week.  This week we will see his second – and third – strikeout.
• Win the Houston series:  The Pirates have played the Astros tough ever since they became an American League team. We expect this to continue  this week and for the Pirates to win the series.
• Split the Milwaukee series:  We think the Bucs will at least split the series with the Brewers.  If it wasn’t Milwaukee, and the Pirates had a better history against them, then perhaps we would be a little bolder with our prediction.  For now we think they will win at least two games.
• Jordy Mercer will keep trading slugging for average:  In late August, Jordy’s performance at the plate starts to favor extra base hits at the expense of getting on base. So we are making two predictions here. First, Jordy’s batting average for the week will be well below his season average of .260. Second, two of the hits he does get will go for extra bases.
• Wild card standings:  With so many moving parts it is hard to forecast where the Pirates will be at the end of the week. They are chasing the Marlins and the Cardinals as well as whoever isn’t winning the National League West that day.  We think when the dust settles next Sunday, August 28th, the Pirates will be between 1 and 2.5 games back of the 2nd wild card spot.

That’s our five predictions for this week in Pittsburgh Pirates baseball.  Be sure to tune in next week to see how we fared.