What Can Past All-Star Breaks tell us about the Pittsburgh Pirates this year?
The Pittsburgh Pirates have reached the unofficial midway point of the Major League season as the All-Star Break is here. This may be a case of the break coming at a bad time for the Pirates as they have gone 8-2 in their last 10 games.
The team has bounced back from a dreadful June and have looked like a completely different club in July. The most important thing the team has done is finally stand up to the Chicago Cubs. As they finally won a series against their nemesis to end the first half.
The big wins leading into the All-Star Break got me thinking about the other playoff teams in recent seasons.
Interestingly enough the 2015 Pirates also went 8-2 in the 10 games prior to the All-Star Break. They looked like the best team in baseball entering the break.
They then followed up their 8-2 streak with a fairly mediocre 4-6 run. The team still had a very good July in 2015 as they went 17-9 overall.
The current season of Pirates baseball could learn a lot from the 2014 club as that team looked very mediocre for a large chunk of the season. Obviously, they turned it around big time in the second of the season.
The 2014 team also went 5-5 leading into the break. The team followed that up with a very good 7-3 stretch. The Pirates overall went 39-28 in the second half of the season and used a 15-11 July to kickstart their push to the postseason.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”#000000″ class=”” size=””]Interestingly enough the 2015 Pirates also went 8-2 in the 10 games prior to the All-Star Break.[/perfectpullquote]Before Johnny Cueto dropped the ball in the 2013 Wildcard Game, the Pirates had a fantastic 94 win season. Much like the 2014 club, the team went 5-5 in advance of the All-Star Game. They followed up that stretch with another run of .500 baseball in their next 10 games. As a result, the Pirates ended up going only 14-12 in July.
The Pirates will open up their second half schedule by playing the Washington Nationals. This could prove to be a very tough series as the Nationals are one of the elite teams in baseball. However, they follow that up by facing the Milwaukee Brewers, the Philadelphia Phillies and, the Seattle Mariners. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Pirates have a 6-4 or 7-3 stretch.
The Pirates will also need to improve their starting pitching for the second half of the season. The come from behind victories are fun, but that is not a sustainable path to success.
Despite the 8-2 stretch, the starters have gone an average of a little over five innings per start and pitched to a 5.37ERA in that time. That is something the team must improve on because the offense cannot bail the team out every single night. We saw in June if the offense falters, the team will struggle mightily.
The 2015 team pitched much better going into the All-Star Break. During their last 10, the starters lasted an average of 6.2 innings and pitched a 2.59ERA. The pitching was a strength of the 2015 Pirates and their 8-2 stretch leading into the All-Star Break was no different.
The 2014 club was a bit worse than the 2015 team. Not by much, however, as their starters went an average of 6.2 innings with a 3.14ERA. That team was bolstered by a complete game from Edinson Volquez and a near complete game from Jeff Locke. The team rebounded from the poor start to finish with 3.47ERA, which was good for the fifth in the National League.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”#000000″ class=”” size=””]The current season of Pirates baseball could learn a lot from the 2014 club as that team looked very mediocre for a large chunk of the season.[/perfectpullquote]The 2013 Pirates ended the 20-year playoff drought and featured one of the best rotations in Pirates’ history. That pitching staff was very good leading into the break as they lasted an average of seven innings per start with a 2.95ERA. Despite that, the team only went 5-5 as they lost several low-scoring affairs. It was still abundantly clear that the pitching was going to continue to be the anchor of that team.
The Pirates have gone a combined 46-32 in the month of July during their consecutive postseasons, which is an average month of 15-10. If the Pirates play to form in July, it could very well be the kickstart they need to have a very successful second half.
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