CINCINNATI -- The Pirates’ offense was left scratching their heads yet again Wednesday night, losing, 1-0, to the Reds at Great American Ball Park to extend their losing streak to a season-long eight games.
The bats could only muster three singles and a walk, and never threatened Cincinnati starter Luis Castillo, who shined in his seven innings of work.
Not that their issues have been limited to just one pitcher. Wednesday was the fourth time in five games they were limited to one run or none at all.
They struck out 11 times on the night, and when they did hit it hard, it stayed on the ground.
“You’ve got to be aggressive, but it has to be aggressive with contact,” Derek Shelton said, referring to the strikeouts. “Part of it is our approach, 100 percent, not to shy away from that.”
Let’s talk about that approach: Is there a common theme that can be fixed team wide, or is this strictly a problem that needs to be solved on an individual basis?
“I think you have to look at it both ways,” Shelton said. “You look at it as a group and you talk about it as a group as a whole function but then it comes down to the individual approach and making sure that we stay there. The most important part of that is we identify with each guy and what they’re thinking and what they’re doing. When that happens, you can formulate a better plan for how they’re going to function within themselves.
“It’s kind of a two-pronged thing but you have to look at it individually first so you can kind of get it to feed off each other.”
Well, let’s look at both prongs: As a team and the group.
As a team, the Pirates rank dead last in baseball in on-base percentage (.281), slugging percentage (.344) and, as you would guess, OPS (.625). If the season ended today, their wRC+, which takes how the rest of the league is hitting into consideration and puts it on a scale where 100 is average, would be the worst since at least the start of the sport's modern era in 1900. The mark to beat is 70, as done by the 1952 team. They’re at 69 right now.
That’s what is at stake over these last 12 games. Playing well enough to not be considered one of the worst hitting clubs of all-time. That’s not playing for pride as much as it is trying to avoid shame.
No National League team swings and misses as often as they do: An astounding 12.5% of the time. They chase out of the zone more than most clubs. Going by Baseball Savant’s data, they are among the bottom 10 clubs for how often they barrel pitches, or strike it with a high exit velocity and good launch angle.
Or to put it as simply as possible, they have scored just 173 runs en route to their 14-34 record, the fewest in baseball.
As for individual players, where to start?
Not with Ke’Bryan Hayes, who is already threatening Jacob Stallings for the team’s WAR lead even though he spotted everyone else the first five weeks of the season. Add Stallings to the mix of players who have been mostly good at the dish this year, too. Same with Colin Moran and Erik Gonzalez, though they have cooled off since their hot starts.
And even Josh Bell has heated up as of late, homering three times this road trip. He currently has a 10-game hitting streak going, too. He’ll mostly be spared here, even though this season has been a major step backwards from his All-Star 2019.
As for the rest of the roster, they’ve all been consistently bad. Horrible, even. Virtually no one has been a viable hitter outside of pockets of a couple games.
Bryan Reynolds and Kevin Newman have had dramatic sophomore slumps. I already wrote something separate on Newman recently, so no sense beating that into the ground. Reynolds was in the mix for a batting title for most of last year. This year, his batting average is the worst out of all qualified National Leaguers at .174.
Reynolds has played 44 games this year. Through 44 games in 2019, he was batting .345, almost exactly double what it is now.
Adam Frazier and Cole Tucker are both in the bottom 10% in baseball in exit velocity and hard hit percentage. John Ryan Murphy had 11 at-bats against Reds pitchers this year. He struck out 11 times. Gregory Polanco…
Oh, Polanco:
You have to go all the way back to 1978 to find a hitter who finished a season with a worse batting average than his .135 while receiving as much playing time as he has. He struck out once in his three trips to the plate Wednesday, lowering his season strikeout rate to 41.3%.
While the pitching still has had its problems, the offense is mostly to blame for the Pirates’ worst record in baseball. History is on the line. Bad history.
“Hopefully it starts tomorrow early,” Bell said about turning things around. “I think if we get on the board early, we can ride it out for the rest of the game, but I was there a couple weeks ago. It seems like every out feels like two or three, and you’re searching for hits instead of searching for quality at-bats, but all it takes is one to turn things around, and hopefully that starts tomorrow.”
• JT Brubaker gave arguably his best start of his rookie season Wednesday, going 5 1/3 innings of one run ball, relying primarily on the sinker and slider combo that had been so successful for him in the minors.
"It was just being able to get ahead early with the fastball, backdoor slider," Brubaker said. "It really opened up me being able to use other pitches the rest of the AB [at-bat]."
Brubaker was coming off his worst start thus far on Sept. 9, where he allowed seven runs over the same amount of innings he pitched Wednesday. He said his stuff felt good that start too, but these results were obviously much better.
"It was important just to make sure I stayed on the attack," Brubaker said on what was different.
• Brubaker matched Castillo pitch for pitch through four, but got into trouble in the fifth. After getting ahead of Curt Casalli with two outs, the Reds' catcher battled back from being down 0-2 to getting a base hit to keep the inning going.
"Really just got too east and west on him," Brubaker said. "Really didn't give him an opportunity to swing at a strike-to-ball pitch."
Shogo Akiyama made him pay the following at-bat, driving in the game's only run with a rope to left.
• It was very nearly two runs though, had it not been for a play in the field by Hayes.
Casalli stole second during the Akiyama at-bat, but held up at third on the hit. Akiyama assumed the throw was going home and started to bolt towards second, but Hayes cut it off and stared him down while he was in no-man's land.
As Hayes started to jog towards second to catch him and end the inning, Casalli broke for home, but the rookie was aware of what was going on and fired a strike to Murphy to get him.
Here's the whole play:
"The biggest thing about that was when he went to attack Shogo, he stayed under control," Shelton said. "If you run full-out at that, you don’t have the ability to stop and spin and make a good throw. He stayed under control the whole time. Very good awareness. It’s something we’ve talked about. This kid’s a baseball player.”
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Ke'Bryan Hayes tries to turn two in the first inning Wednesday.
• Sam Howard gave Brubaker a hand to close his ledger in the sixth, standing the runner he inherited on third.
• Director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk spoke to the media Wednesday. Here's what he had to say about Jameson Taillon lobbying to make an appearance before the season is done.
• The Pirates are now 6-11 in one run games.
• Factoid of the night: Bell hit a ground ball 114.2 mph for an out into the shift in the second inning. That was tied for the highest exit velocity any Pirates batter has had this year. Polanco matched him on Aug. 5, and that too resulted in a ground ball out into a shift.