Leaning up against the rail of the home dugout at PNC Park at the end of the season, Pirates hitting coach Andy Haines gave a brief, but fair state of the union of the Pirates' offense.
"We're showing signs that we are way closer," Haines said to me. "I don't want to come across that I'm satisfied, because I'm certainly not. But we're giving people some real signs of what's to come."
As a team, the Pirates improved by 14 wins in 2023, a big step forward of their goal of making the postseason in 2024. If they're going to achieve that, they are going to need to hit more.
Going by the overall volume of work, they did take a step forward as a group this past year. The team slash line went from .222/.291/.364 in 2022 to .239/.315/.392 in 2023. Going by wRC+ -- which takes the league output and a team's ballpark and weighs an offensive output based on a scale where 100 is league average -- the Pirates went from an 83 wRC+ in 2022 to 90 in 2023. They scored over 100 more runs as a team (591 to 692), which is a definitive sign of improvement.
Even though they trended in the right direction, the Pirates ranked 22nd in runs scored, 25th in wRC+ and 22nd in OPS (.707). They still were in the bottom third of the league in many offensive categories, and just a little more offensive output could have potentially altered the trajectory of this season. The Pirates had just 84 games where they scored at least four runs, the fourth-fewest in the majors. Why does that number matter? Because they were 61-23 when they plate at least four runs, as opposed to 15-63 when they were held to three runs or fewer.
There was some improvement. The team's peripherals reflect that in some key areas. In others, they still trail. For them to get better as a unit, continuing to build off those strengths and shore up areas of weakness is going to be vital.
WHAT THEY DID RIGHT:
PITCH SELECTION
A lot has been made about "swing decisions" these last four years, which is shorthand for not chasing pitches outside of the zone and attacking pitches that are in damage zones. It's a vital area for how the Pirates evaluate hitting performance, and the team's improvement in those areas is a big reason why Haines is coming back as hitting coach.
As a team, the Pirates' 25.6% swing percentage on pitches out of the zone was the lowest in the National League, down 2.5 points from last year's mark of 28.1%. The Pirates were dinged by an abnormally high amount of called strikes out pitches out of the zone, which does negate a bit of this, but the hitters did a good job controlling what they could control.
Mix in an increase at the number of "meatball" pitches the Pirates swung at (77.1%, up 3.7 points from a year ago, the second-largest increase in the sport), and a young hitting core was able to learn the zone and what type of pitches they should offer at. That can't be undersold.
WHERE THEY NEED TO GET BETTER:
FEWER WHIFFS
At surface level, this one might be a bit confusing. The Pirates' team swing rate and whiff rates were almost identical from 2022 to 2023, going from 26.2% to 26.4% in the latter category. They do swing and miss a little more than most teams (25.7% league average), but hardly to the point where it seems like it would be a major cause for concern, right?
Well, not all whiffs are created equal. The Pirates swung and missed on 205 more pitches in the zone in 2023 compared to 2022, the second-largest increase of any team behind the Rockies' 272.
At the end of the day, the Pirates' 18% whiff rate on pitches in the zone is basically in line with the league average (17.8%), but outside of the abbreviated 2020 season, the Pirates have never missed on so many pitches in the zone in the pitch tracking era. While their team strikeout rate did go down a tick this year (25.3% to 24%), they still ranked ninth in baseball. There are more whiffs and strikeouts in today's game compared to just even a few years ago, teams that put the ball in play more generally have more team success. Of the ten teams that had the highest strikeout rate, only one made the playoffs in 2023 (Twins) and 2022 (Braves). The Pirates may be swinging at the right pitches more frequently, but they still need to get the bat to the ball more.
WHAT THEY DID RIGHT:
HARDER CONTACT
For the first time since 2015, the Pirates ranked in the top half of the league in hard-hit percentage, or batted balls that had an exit velocity of at least 95 mph. They were last in hard hit rate in 2021, but upped themselves to 14th this year, making solid contact 40.4% of the time. It's the second straight year the Pirates increased their hard hit rate by 3.1% compared to the year prior:
That harder contact translated to 39 more barrels (a batted ball with high exit velocity and ideal launch angle), a jump of nearly a full mph to exit velocity (88.3 mph to 89.2 mph) and a .324 batting average on contact, up 17 points from a year ago. While hard contact isn't the only tenet of good hitting, hitters in 2023 had a .506 batting average and 1.008 slugging percentage on batted balls hit 95+ mph. It's a good place to start.
WHERE THEY NEED TO GET BETTER:
YOUNG PLAYER CONTRIBUTIONS
The gap between the majors and minors is quite possibly the largest it has ever been. The Pirates had a rookie at the bat 1,556 times last year, the sixth-most in the league, so they had plenty of opportunities to see exactly how wide that gap is.
"The big leagues are really hard, and it is different than Triple-A," Derek Shelton said toward the end of the season. "That's point one, like every night, it's a grind here. And then the second thing is, they got a bunch of Major League reps. There's no way that we can ever facilitate that in a different way, because the game will show you what's going on. So, those are the two things, like hey, the game here is hard. And then the second thing is they got the ability to see why it's hard by getting reps."
The results weren't exactly great. On the whole, Pirates rookies had a collective on-base percentage 11 points lower than the league average (.299) and their slugging percentage was 55 points lower (.336). Going by rookies who had at least 100 major-league plate appearances, only Jared Triolo finished with above-average offensive results:
Average 2023 Rookie: .240/.310/.391, .701 OPS
Jared Triolo: 209 PAs, .298/.388/.398, .785 OPS
Liover Peguero: 213 PAs, .237/.280/.374, .653 OPS
Henry Davis: 255 PAs, .213/.302/.351, .653 OPS
Nick Gonzales: 128 PAs, .209/.268/.348, .616 OPS
Endy Rodriguez: 204 PAs, .220/.284/.328, .612 OPS
Ji Hwan Bae: 371 PAs, .231/.296/.311, .608 OPS
Alika Williams: 112 PAs, .198/.270/.248, .518 OPS
Of course that's not the whole story. Davis, for example, was dealing with a hand injury late in the year. All of these players were playing deeper into the season than they were accustomed to. Even Triolo, the best rookie hitter last year, didn't show much pop until the final month of the season, showing how important time is for growth.
But there's no way around it: The only way this team will elevate themselves to a playoff contender is if they get more offensive contributions from players in their second year. They saw it this past year with Jack Suwinski. They need more players to follow suit moving forward.
