ISO shows Pirates’ power outage so far in 2017
Baseball is a sport that evolves constantly.
The game can look drastically different than what it looked like in years, months or even days previous.
That axiom has proven most true when it comes to power numbers. Gone are the days of the McGwiire/Sosa era. Those gaudy home run numbers are nearly extinct, with a select few being able to approach an arbitrary milestone such as tallying 50 home runs in a single season.
What we see now instead is a leveling off, with more realistic and attainable home run totals becoming the norm. In 2016, over 100 players had 20 or more home runs, a Major League baseball record. Though the average number of home runs per game wilted to 1.16 per, the power game was alive and well at the individual level, even if the circus-like numbers were reduced to whispered legends.
In 2017, the Pittsburgh Pirates find themselves to be a power-challenged team. Today we are going to use ISO to illustrate this.
ISO, or “Isolated power” is an advanced stat designed to give a true indication of power on both an individual or team level. The figure is arrived at by manipulating two tried-and-true stats in batting average (AVG) and slugging percentage (SLG).
Simply put, ISO = SLG-AVG. The simplicity of the formula belies just how much information is distilled from it.
For 2017, the Pirates have a truly horrid ISO, ranking 29th out of 30 MLB teams with a .144 figure. They arrived at this ugly mark via a ranking of 26th in SLG (.387) and a 28th ranking in home runs with 57. Of course, there is more to slugging percentage than home runs, but the bad news is that the club also ranks in the bottom third — 21st overall — in doubles with 93.
Though they have 18 dingers in their last 14 games as of this writing, a quick look up and down the roster finds little power.
As of this writing, Josh Bell is the surprise leader in the clubhouse with 11 home runs, followed by Andrew McCutchen’s tally of nine. Josh Harrison has shown a bit more power in the season’s first two months with seven round trippers.
The rest is a middling display, but the point remains that the Pirates could end up with 7-8 players with 20 home runs, much in step with the recent trends.
With that said, it is tantalizing to think about what the club’s power might look like should Jung Ho Kang be available. Or Starling Marte for that matter. The difference would not have come in either player carrying a lofty home run total, but rather the overall effect that their presence has in run creation.
The Pittsburgh Pirates have their fair share of issues right now, and ISO tells us that power is one of them.