Pirates trying to mount turnaround after June swoon
The Pittsburgh Pirates went through a June swoon that has many fans changing their favorite moniker for the club to Bums instead of Buccos.
Yet, after a blitzing 8-2 record in July, the team finds itself with a new lease on life.
But with that renewed vigor comes a very small margin of error.
How did the team get here?
We start by acknowledging that the club caught a raw deal in terms of scheduling. Pittsburgh had 31 consecutive game days scheduled from May 13 through June 12. To be fair, there was a rainout or two mixed in, but there was also a one-day getaway trip to Colorado to make up for an earlier rainout. The highly abnormal slate surely took a toll, even if its results are hard to fully quantify.
By virtue of the Pirates’ 9-19 June record, Andrew McCutchen and company slid backwards, allowing the Cubs’ lead to swell to an engorged 13.5 games as of this writing.
A warning: It does not get prettier.
The problems that plagued the Pirates in June were many and varied. One can point to the pitching, and that would be an apt place to start. The Pirates found themselves in the bottom third of the 15-team National League in many key indicators.
Deception seems to have completely left the staff, as they had the second lowest swinging strike percentage at 8.8 percent. The hurlers were also hit the hardest in the NL with a 35.8 percent “hard-hit factor.” They only hit the strike zone at a 43.6 percent clip, good for 12th place out of 15 teams. The NL-worst mark of K/9 (strikeouts per nine) of 7.1 conspired with the third-highest BB/9 (walks per nine innings) clip of 3.59 to form the second highest ERA (5.31) in the NL for the month of June.
A rotation held together by spit and a prayer did receive some good news, with Jameson Taillon and Chad Kuhl making capable debuts. Taillon in particular has come largely as advertised, allowing for the normal rookie hiccups.
They weren’t enough to fully compensate for Francisco Liriano’s vicious slider losing its bite. It could not possibly replace the doggedness of Gerrit Cole, whose absence lingers into the summer months. They can’t make up for Jeff Locke’s Jekyll and Hyde act, or Jon Niese’s 19 home runs, second worst in the NL.
In early July, Tyler Glasnow and Steven Brault made their debuts. They gave a shot in the arm to a flagging rotation that might look very different very soon. Niese has clearly become a liability and has left fans pining for what could have been with J.A. Happ.
If the pitching lost its effectiveness over the past month, the hitting has nearly abandoned its on-base-centric approach.
In June, the Pirates were bit by a bit of bad luck — their .BABIP (Batting average on balls in play) was just the fourth-lowest in the NL at .290. When the ball is put in play, the Pirates hitters have trouble squaring up the pitch, with a middle-of-the-pack 32.5 hard hit percentage. This can almost directly be attributed to their rank of 12th in line drive percentage with 20.1.
Teams are still showing the Pirates respect, as their percentage of fastballs seen by the club — 32 percent — ranks 14th. This is a double-edged sword, as their linear pitch performance against the heat is -15.8, with zero considered average.
The club’s performance in June led many to call for drastic change. General Manager Neal Huntington has been able to ignore the noise to this point, and continues to think of this team as contenders. With the team’s recent play putting them back into contention — just 1.5 games out of a wild card spot at the break — he might just be right.
Only one set of numbers can prove that to be true or false.
They are old-fashioned numbers. Not sabermetric. Numbers as old as the game itself.
Wins and Losses.