Welcome to another edition of the Pittsburgh Pirates Prediction Machine, in which we make predictions about five Pirate performances in the upcoming week. We also take a look back at the previous week’s predictions to see how each panned out.
Last Week’s Predictions
The Pittsburgh Pirates had a short week (July 4 through July 10), due to the All-Star break, so the Prediction Machine also had a short slate with only three predictions.
We predicted that the Pirates offense would cool down. The Pirates had been scoring an average of 4.7 runs per game and, given the Pirates faced one of the best teams in baseball in the Washington Nationals, we expected the offense to drop off a bit. We predicted less than 3 runs per game for this series and we were right. The offense went ice cold, scoring only 4 runs in 3 games against stellar Nationals pitching. The Pirates were lucky to escape with one win in the series.
We expected Jung Ho Kang to hit a home run. We just though Kang was due as he has not hit a home run since June 24. He did get a hit and a walk to go along with two strikeouts, but no dingers but we were wrong about Kang. He doesn’t look ready to hit much of anything right now.
We thought Sean Rodriguez would continue his hot hitting. We previously profiled how Rodriguez hits in bunches and we expected this to continue after the All-Star break. Although h was 5 for 16 in the five games leading into the break, he was only 1 for 8 in the Washington series. We were also wrong about Rodriguez.
This Week’s Prognostications
For the upcoming week (July 18-24), the Pirates return home to PNC Park and play the Milwaukee Brewers and the Philadelphia Phillies. These two teams are a combined 82-100 and their pitching staffs have the 10th and 13th worst batting-average-against (BAA) in the National League. On top of that, heir offenses are not scoring very many runs and currently rank 12th and 14th in the NL in that category. All the starting pitchers the Pirates are expected to face are right-handed, so Clint Hurdle’s lefty lineup should be busy this week. Given that, here are our predictions for this week.
We will see the Pirate offense return against the Brewers: They face Junior Guerra (3.06 ERA), Chase Anderson (5.44 ERA) and Matt Garza (5.74 ERA) in the Milwaukee series. The Pirates bates were stymied by Washington so they will be eager to get after these Milwaukee pitchers. Expect an aggressive, “swing early and often” mentality and for the Pirates offense to return to the norm of at least 4.7 runs per game.
John Jaso will get things started right. Jaso will bat leadoff for most of the games and will be facing good, but not elite, right handed pitching. This will be the first time he sees Guerra and Anderson and he’s had first-time success against these kinds of pitchers. We predict that he will get on base in the bottom of the first inning in at least two games this week.
Matt Joyce will have a big week: Given six straight games against RHP, Matt Joyce should get opportunities as a pinch-hitter and a spot starter. We expect him to do well in these situations, balancing a few strikeouts with at least two extra base hits.
Jameson Taillon will scuffle a bit: Coming off of his first real rest of the season, Taillon will have to deal with nerves all over again. We think he will have a good game against the Brewers, but will walk at least two batters and strike out 5 or less. Maybe it’s a good sign that our expectations are high that we consider this to be a “down” game for Taillon. His start against the Phillies later in the week should be better.
Andrew McCutchen will continue to strikeout: Four more K’s in the Nationals series and an 0 for 8 performance in the 18 inning Sunday game leave us finding McCutchen hard to watch. It is disappointing, but we see no indicators that things will change this week. We expect at least 5 more strikeouts, hopefully interspersed with some hits.
That’s our five predictions for this week. Be sure to tune in next week and see how we did.
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