On Sunday, the Pirates managed six runs and 11 hits to salvage the series finale against the Cubs.
Somehow.
That may be harsh, but let’s be honest, this isn’t the most threatening lineup the Pirates will produce this year:
Troy Stokes Jr. will make his Major League debut this afternoon.#LetsGoBucs pic.twitter.com/rgeukKH07E
— Pirates (@Pirates) May 9, 2021
Kevin Newman batted second – the spot that should go to a team’s best hitter in an analytically optimized lineup – and, frankly, it wasn’t that outrageous of a choice considering the nine players Derek Shelton had to choose from.
Hey, they produced Sunday, even if there was some luck involved. In that four run first inning, every batted ball had an exit velocity under 90 mph. Hard contact is classified as 95 mph or higher. Wilmer Difo and Todd Frazier recorded back-to-back two-out hits with hit probabilities of 13% and 4%. (Mathematically speaking, there’s about a 1-in-200 chance of that ever happening.) The batted ball gods smiled on the Pirates at Wrigley.
Looking at that Sunday lineup, if there’s anything more striking than the names listed, it’s the reminder of who isn’t there. Let’s do a quick roll call of who the Pirates are missing:
Ke’Bryan Hayes: Transferred to the 60-day injured list Sunday. That wasn’t because of a setback, but between the time he has already missed because of his left wrist and the forthcoming rehab assignment, it made sense to free up the roster spot.
Colin Moran: Placed on the 10-day injured list Sunday. After pulling his left groin trying to turn a double-play Saturday, there’s no timetable yet for when Moran could return to the lineup.
Bryan Reynolds: Shelton borrowed some hockey terminology by saying Reynolds has “lower body soreness.” He’s been out of the lineup the last two days.
Gregory Polanco: The Pirates have not disclosed why Polanco is on the injured list, but since they were able to add a player to the roster without removing another, it has to be COVID-19 related. Ben Cherington said on his radio show Sunday that Polanco should return “soon.”
Factor in that the opening day center field tandem of Anthony Alford and Dustin Fowler have both been designated for assignment and that Chad Kuhl is on the injured list as well, and all of a sudden the Pirates are down two-thirds of their opening day lineup.
Of those remaining three, there’s Adam Frazier and Jacob Stallings, both of whom have good overall results and identical 120 wRC+ marks. Frazier is slashing .300/.374/.408, and Stallings .247/.378/.395. They’re valuable for their high on-base percentages, not their power. There’s nothing wrong with that. A good lineup needs guys like them.
The third is Newman, who needed a pair of hits Sunday to get his batting average back over the Mendoza line. Even with the hits, his OPS is just .491, which translates to a 39 wRC+. It’s a far cry from batting over .600 in spring training.
The Pirates came into this year without many hitters with thump. Most of the ones that did are shelved. The plus hitters they have remaining are valuable because of their OBP, not their slugging. And with each player who goes down with injury, the Pirates have to go one player deeper on their depth chart to replace them.
That should all be taken into consideration before looking at this chart. With that said, the Pirates’ offense has been pretty darn bad thus far:
It’s pretty grim. Barely any extra-base power, and an average an OBP that hardly suggests that they are consistently stringing hits together. Tough to score runs without either.
Those are the traditional stats. Does the world of analytics and Baseball Savant offer any more hope?
Entering play Sunday.
No, no it doesn’t. If anything, it looks a little more bleak, with the Pirates ranking in the bottom in baseball in exit velocity and barrels. That’s where your OPS comes from. A Stallings walk doesn’t mean much if he’s just going to be stranded on first.
Entering play Sunday, Phillip Evans led the team with a 91.9 mph average exit velocity. Baseball Savant lists that as the 25th best among qualified hitters. Next on the list is Moran, who averages 89.1 mph on a batted ball event. That’s 76th in baseball. Out of the top 75 hitters in just hitting the ball hard, the most basic goal of hitting, the Pirates only have one player place.
And that player is in a wicked slump. Evans is batting just .132 over his last 19 games played, but his peripherals haven’t been horrible. His average exit velocity in that stretch is still over 90 mph, and his xwOBA is an above league average .337. He’s not crushing the ball like he did those first few weeks, but he’s hit the ball much better than his results would indicate.
Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned from Evans. Let’s not look at the Pirates’ offense as a whole because, well, they’re not a whole unit right now.
Before Sunday’s game, the Pirates had played 32 games. If we were to break the season down to eight game chunks, that would give us four equal bite-sized looks at the Pirates’ offense. How well did they hit the ball.
Start with exit velocity. The league average is 88.3 mph:
And another chart for xwOBA, so we can see what the overall quality of contact was like, launch angle and direction included. This isn't based on seeing-eye singles or bloops, but just striking the ball well. The league average here is .327:
There have been chunks of this season where the Pirates have been close to average or even a bit better in these two key peripherals. Maybe nothing to write home about, but that third quarter, where they won two series against the Tigers and Twins and split with the Royals, was strong. It's a bit ironic considering there was a no-hit bid in the middle there, but even that didn’t ruin the roughly week-long sample size.
Meanwhile, the Pirates are currently down most of their hitters who actually can hit the ball hard (Polanco, Moran, Reynolds) and aren’t doing much at the plate. An RBI bloop may be a game-winner, but it’s hard contact that puts a team in position to win games.
It’s no coincidence that the two stretches where the Pirates hit the best – the first and third quarter – was when their offense was its most complete. With the exception of losing Hayes early, they carried most of their opening day lineup through the opening weeks of the season. It wasn’t earth-shattering, but with the improved pitching, the Pirates were over .500 for a bit. Once the hitting tapered off, partially because they lost their big hitters, they started losing again.
Of course high exit velocities and xwOBAs won't always translate to more runs on a game-by-game basis, but it's about the big picture. If you hit the ball well, good things will happen eventually. That's the goal, and it's achievable.
Is the Pirates’ offense hopeless? No, but it definitely is fragile. One or two injuries can seriously slow the unit, and when it’s three or four, it gets pretty barebone pretty fast. Maybe there’s a path for this offense to be ok in this new year of the pitcher, but it’s going to require some patience, and a little luck to make sure everyone fully recovers from their ailments, to get there.