The Pittsburgh Pirates have had a weak offense all season. As a unit, the offense ranks near the bottom of the National League in runs per game, home runs, batting average, and slugging. They lack thump. They often lack overall excitement.
Aside from Andrew McCutchen and Josh Bell, the Pittsburgh Pirates offense has been flat out bad. Even All Star Josh Harrison has regressed back to an average hitter this season. Just how bad is this offense? The results may surprise you.
Get with the times
The Pittsburgh Pirates have never had a high powered offense in their contending seasons under GM Neal Huntingdon. Great pitching with timely hitting has always been the recipe. That being said, they have never been this bad compared to the rest of the league.
The table below shows the relationship between Pirates’ runs per game compared to National League teams as a whole runs per game.
[table id=239 /]As we can see, the 2017 Pirates have actually scored more runs per game than the 94-win 2013 Pirates. This year’s team isn’t even far behind the 98-win squad of 2015.
The problem is that the league as a whole is scoring more. The Pirates haven’t kept pace. The baseballs are juiced but for whatever reason the Pirates can’t seem to take advantage like other teams have. Lack of power has killed the Pirates this year.
As we know, home runs are up. Hits are down. Both are down for the Pirates. Coming into the season, the Pirates were really going to lean on the likes of Gregory Polanco and Starling Marte for offense along with McCutchen. McCutchen has been great. Bell has picked up some slack. Polanco can’t stay on the field. Marte has done just about nothing since coming back from suspension. The loss altogether of Jung-ho Kang has proved to be extremely costly.
Right now, the Pirates have just five players with an OPS+ of at least 100. They only have three players with an OPS+ higher than 102. One of those players in Sean Rodriguez but his sample size after joining the Pittsburgh Pirates is too small for judgement.
What about ISO, or Isolated Power? Designed to measure raw power, ISO is derived by subtracting batting average from slugging percentage. For example, if someone has a .250 average but a .500 slugging, their raw power, or ISO, would be .250.
The 2017 Pittsburgh Pirates have clearly been lapped by their National League counterparts in pure power. As of this writing, the current National League ISO rate is .171. If we take all hitters with at least 150 plate appearances and group them by ISO and then by team, we see exactly how badly Pittsburgh lags in power:
Mobile users – tap image to view
Pittsburgh is tied with the Atlanta Braves for the second-fewest players with 150+ PAs and an ISO of .170 or greater, ahead of only the hapless San Francisco Giants.
And anytime John Jaso is one of those four, well, you’re going to have a bad time.
A change in philosophy is needed
The Pittsburgh Pirates need desperately to find buy low offensive players. They have done this with pitching. We all know the success the Pirates have with pitchers such as A.J. Burnett, Francisco Liriano (for a time), J.A. Happ, and even Ivan Nova.
They need to find similar success finding buy low power hitting threats. Last offseason showed that power was extremely cheap. Logan Morrison signed a one year $2.5 million contract this year. He has 28 home runs. Eric Thames signed a three year $16 million contract with a fourth year option in the offseason. He has 27 home runs. Those are affordable contracts, even for the Pirates.
The power is out there. The Pirates need to do a better job of finding it. More than that, they need to focus on it.
In the past, their offense was okay. It got the job done. If you pitched well enough, you could stack up wins.
That is no longer the case. Things change.
The Pittsburgh Pirates need to change, or risk putting themselves at a severe disadvantage.
Image credit – Daniel Decker Photography
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
