Today might be the worst sports day of the year. The Pirates and Giants won’t play the National League Wild Card Game until Wednesday night, and so I’m sitting here on Monday morning trying to sort through a huge tangle of thoughts and sort them into two or three day’s wort of posts, while simultaneously realizing that half of the posts will be pointless if the Pirates can’t manage to win on Wednesday. I also cannot for the life of me remember what shirt I wore for last year’s Wild Card Game (I’m pretty sure it was an Andrew McCutchen shirsey, but I’m not quite 100% positive), and so I’m having a minor superstition-related nervous breakdown this morning. What I want to write this morning is a comparison of this year’s Pirate team to last year’s and ask whether this year’s team is capable of doing what last year’s team was not (namely: win a playoff series or two or three), but given the nature of Wednesday’s game, that feels awfully presumptuous to me.
Let’s start with a look back on the 2014 regular season and some comparison’s to last year’s Pirates. It is difficult to argue that this year’s Pirates are better than last year’s Pirates in any substantial fashion. This year’s team is certainly more capable of scoring runs (682 vs. 634), but they’re also more capable of giving up runs (631 vs. 577). Last year their Pythagorean record was 88-74, this year it’s 87-75. If we go deeper into the stats, the Pirates have a third-order win percentage* of .557 this year (~90 wins) vs. last year’s .567 (92 wins).
Saying that this year’s Pirates aren’t as good as last year’s is a pretty obvious statement. Last year’s club won six more games than this year’s, and while I’m not sure their rotation was quite as good as it was publicly perceived to be, it was certainly a lot deeper than the rotation that they’re running into the playoffs this year. The bullpen was as good as it was publicly perceived to be last year, and it’s not nearly as good this year, which is also an obvious statement from here that was true even before the two season-ending meltdowns in Cincinnati this weekend.
This year’s Pirates don’t have to beat last year’s Pirates in a playoff series, though, and while they’re not as good as last year’s Pirates on paper, I think it’s also fair to consider the way that the two seasons played out. The 2013 Pirates more or less sprinted out of the gate and didn’t really slow down until the summer heated up. They hit the All-Star Break at 56-37, and though it’s not fair to say they had a playoff spot locked up by that point, it would’ve taken an epic meltdown to for them to be left out. They didn’t play exceptionally well in the second half, going 38-31 and outscoring their opponents 277 to 266. This year is basically a photographic negative of that. The Pirates had a terrible first half and barely got themselves together enough to be above .500 (49-46), but they’ve sliced through the National League since then, to the tune of a 39-28 record (which includes a seven-game losing streak), outscoring their opponents 291 to 238.
And still … I don’t know. When the Pirates clinched their playoff berth last Tuedsay, I wrote about how in a lot of ways the long journey for this particular team and the validation of a second playoff berth makes this season even better than last season, but I honestly still have no idea exactly what to make of this team. To put it in other terms, the part of me that loves the way that baseball can feel like a dusty old novel loves this Pirate team and the way this season has unfolded. Meanwhile, the part of me that loves to take baseball apart piece by piece to try and understand as well as possible is intrigued by this Pirate team and by their offense and by the way that their pitching staff and defense fit together, but that part of me is also skeptical of their ability to make any sort of deep run into the playoffs with this particular pitching staff and bullpen.
I’m sure this is obvious, but the dichotomous nature of internet discussion really frustrates me when it comes to this team. In a lot of ways, what the Pirates accomplished this year is really incredible; they lost arguably their best (or at least most reliable) starter from last year to free agency, they lost the prospect that was supposed to provide a mid-season boost to the rotation just as spring training started, they suffered significant injuries to Francisco Liriano and Gerrit Cole, they lost Andrew McCutchen for two weeks, Neil Walker had an appendectomy, Starling Marte only played in 135 games due to various injuries, Pedro Alvarez flat-out forgot how to play baseball before injuring his foot, Gregory Polanco’s development wasn’t as smooth as it seemed like it might’ve been six months ago, Jason Grilli and Wandy Rodriguez exploded, and so on and so on. A lot of things went wrong for this team, and it’s a testament to everyone involved (the players, the coaches, the front office) that we’re sitting here on the Monday after the regular season arguing about how badly they screwed things up for the Wild Card Game by starting Gerrit Cole yesterday. This team wasn’t obviously a playoff team in March even under “if everything goes right” scenarios. Everything did not go right, but the Pirates still made the playoffs.
And yet, they’re barely in the playoffs, and their biggest and most glaring weakness is exactly what everyone thought it would be in March. We’ll talk more about Edinson Volquez tonight/tomorrow, but basically, while I think that Volquez will probably be fine, I’m far from sure that he will be. The Pirates’ most logical run to the World Series goes through the Giants, the Nationals, and the Dodgers (we can debate how good the Dodgers are if it becomes relevant to the Pirates, but simply put, getting to start Clayton Kershaw in 40% of the games in a five-game series makes you the favorite), and the Pirates would be at a huge pitching disadvantage at every single step of the way. It’s certainly possible that their offense can balance that out, and I do think that it’s possible that the pitching staff is better than the numbers indicate because of the shifting defense behind it, but it’s also probably true that “the pitching staff is better than the numbers indicate because of the shifting defense behind it,” is something that fans tell themselves when they’re watching a subpar pitching staff. As much as I just want to sit back and enjoy this team for what it is and deal with whatever it is that happens as it happens, I still can’t shake that one little voice in my head that’s saying, “Yeah, but think about how special they’d be with one more really solid starting pitcher.” That voice is there, because that’s a true statement. I’m not trying to lean on hindsight don’t have an easy solution (acquiring David Price or Jon Lester at the trade deadline might have required giving up Starling Marte, which would’ve been very bad for this particular Pirate team), but really, the Pirates had a long time to acquire a reliable starter in some form or fashion, and they best they came up with were Edinson Volquez and Vance Worley. Edinson Volquez and Vance Worley have been great and they’ve far exceeded my expectations, but they’re going to have to far exceed the peripheral stat lines they’ve put up in the 2014 regular season to be acceptable third and fourth starters for a playoff team that does more than bow out in the Wild Card Game or Division Series.
I can talk myself in circles all day over what this Pirate team is and isn’t (I’m good at talking myself in circles), so let’s finally draw some lines. This Pirate team can hit. They’re probably better at that from top to bottom than almost any other National League team. I have no idea how well they can really pitch. I tend to trust Gerrit Cole in big games, I think Francisco Liriano is almost as good as anyone when he’s on, and I’m willing to listen to rational arguments that I’ve been underrating Edinson Volquez and Vance Worley all year. The bullpen is questionable, but I think there’s enough talent at the back end of it to get by, particularly if John Holdzkom is for real. They seem to be peaking at the right point in the season, which makes this year different from last year, but much of that damage was done against a fairly weak schedule.
Beyond that? I don’t know. Honestly, this Pirate team feels like a different Pirate team than last year. Even though I think last year’s pitching staff was quite a bit better, it’s just hard to watch what the Pirates did for most of the second half and not think that they’re at least capable of more than last year’s team was. That’s not to count any eggs before they hatch; I think this year’s Wild Card Game is a tougher matchup because Johnny Cueto was far from 100% last year, and the prospect of facing a Nats rotation with Strasburg, Zimmermann, Roark, and Fister in the NLDS is no less worrisome than the Cardinal team that was waiting for them last year.
What the Pirates did in this regular season was an accomplishment, given all of the problems that they faced. I’m worried about how they line up for the playoffs, though, due to problems that have been obvious for a long time. At some point, though, all you can do is lay the facts out there and then let the games fall where they will. Is it Wednesday night yet? No? It’s only Monday?
*Third order win percentage estimates win percentage by projecting runs scored/allowed from underlying stats for a Pythagorean-like win/loss projection, then adjusting it for strength of schedule. Obviously wins and losses are what matters, but BP’s third order win percentage is probably the best measure of on-field performance from an analytical standpoint.
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