The Pittsburgh Pirates lost for the fifth consecutive game Wednesday as the Cincinnati Reds beat them 3-0. They mustered seven hits in the game with four reaching scoring position but the Pirates couldn’t come up with the hit necessary to score.
Wednesday’s loss dropped the Pirates to 12-15 on the season and many are already quick to remind how last year’s playoff team started 10-18. Regardless of however the voices-that-be rationalize Pittsburgh’s lackluster start, the overarching lesson is that it is still early in the season.
Even at 27 games in, the Pirates could play fantastic baseball in the next two weeks to pull themselves over .500 and place their fortunes on track for a winning campaign as the season’s quarter-turn approaches.
While early and plenty of time remains for the offense to turn around, it’s best Pittsburgh does so sooner rather than later. The St. Louis Cardinals don’t need any assistance in dominating the NL Central for yet another year and the Pirates aren’t doing themselves any favors when it comes to realizing expectations of winning a division title this year.
The pitching staff, led by Gerrit Cole, Francisco Liriano, and A.J. Burnett, has been superb, save for a few snafus at the back-end of the bullpen last month. Because of the staff, Pittsburgh’s had a chance in each of its games and only four of the Pirates losses have come by four runs or more.
Seven of the 15 Pirates losses thus far have come by only one run which doesn’t serve as an indictment of the pitching staff, save maybe for a 9-8 loss to Chicago, but of a toothless offense.
That offense is one that will eventually come around as groups of good hitters usually do. But early on, the Pirates seem to simply have an aggressive approach at the plate instead of the “patiently-aggressive” one that not only made them one of the best on-base teams last year but also helped them post the NL’s top walk rate at 8.4 percent.
In the first inning of Tuesday’s game against Cincinnati rookie Michael Lorenzen, making his second major-league start, the Pirates were retired in order on seven pitches. They swung at six and made weak contact each time.
The matchup of a veteran offense against a farm hand was one that could have primed the Pirates for a breakout hitting game. Rather, the rookie looked like the experienced party while limiting the Pirates to a run on three hits in six innings.
Wednesday, Mike Leake needed 105 pitches to throw eight shutout innings in which he only struck out two batters. His success hinged on the Pirates grounding out to their pull-sides 14 times and putting the ball on the ground 23 times overall while Pittsburgh struggled to make any sharp contact.
After the game manager Clint Hurdle noted the Pirates did not do a good enough job of staying back in the batter’s box which accounted for so many of the weak groundouts to the pull field.
“The one thing that we’ve not been as good at as we’re capable of is holding our backside through our swing,” Hurdle said. “We’re out in front a little bit, we’ve lost our balance. We’re moving a little too much forward.”
Holding back in the box isn’t a problem unique to Wednesday’s game but one that’s plagued the Pirates in their early-season slump as they appear to be in a “hurry to hit” per the manager. As a “process-oriented” team, Pittsburgh seems to losing its mindset in the box as the results continue to disappoint which is one of the worst things anyone can do in just about anything.
Back to the “patiently-aggressive” approach, this year’s Pirates aren’t including the former aspect as much as they need to in order to have success offensively. Pittsburgh’s 5.7 percent walk rate and .280 on-base percentage are both the second-worst marks in the league, underscoring the lack of patience in the team’s approach.
Neil Walker, who finished 2014 with a .342 on-base percentage and 7.9 percent walk rate, is one of many Pirates with lower figures in each category. He’s walked in only 4.7 percent of plate appearances and sports a .321 on-base percentage.
“When you’re making quick outs and he’s able to nibble more, kind of like the guy did tonight, you make his job a lot easier,” Walker said. “Sometimes you need to take that 2-1 sinker on the black that you can’t do much with and trust yourself with two strikes.”
Logic follows that the more pitches a hitter sees, the greater the chance he’ll get a good one to hit. But opposing pitchers are turning the Pirates aggressiveness around in their favor and Pittsburgh hitters are only seeing 3.77 pitches per at-bat this season.
The Pirates particularly hit fastballs well last year and are now seeing more off-speed pitches as the league’s pitchers counter-punch.
“We’ve seen guys who in certain at-bats might throw 70 percent fastballs and they’re throwing 56, 58 (percent) to us,” Hurdle said. “The spin has increased, the soft has increased especially in offensive counts trying to play on our over-aggressive nature.”
By throwing more off-speed pitches at Pirates hitters, opposing pitchers are able to get ahead in counts before throwing fastballs which hitters are over-eager to swing at even though they may not be an offering favorable to hitters.
“That’s the book on us,” Walker said. “We’ll expand (the strike zone) and especially when things aren’t going well, we’ll really expand.”
Pittsburgh’s offensive success last season was founded on the ability to watch pitcher’s pitches fly by and swing at hitter-friendly offerings. It’s a simple approach and one the Pirates must re-align with to begin improving their offense.
To do that, hitters need to see more pitches even if that doesn’t necessarily get them on base in that immediate at-bat. And one mustn’t be an analytical savant to understand that going without a walk in 10 of 27 games isn’t good.
“You’ve gotta have patience and at this level sometimes it takes a little extra layer of courage to have patience,” Hurdle said. “You might burn some at-bats early but for the greater good it could provide you much more benefit down the road and get you that balance point in the box that you want to be at to be productive.”
