I feel like I’ve been banging the same drum over and over this season: The Pirates need a change with their offensive approach. Perhaps if I were coached by Pirates hitting coach Andy Haines, I wouldn’t be able to consistently make contact with that drum.
Haines has overseen an offense that ranks bottom five in the league over the last three seasons in almost every category. This comes after three years leading Milwaukee’s hitting approach with similar bottom-third results. Today, I want to focus on one stat: wOBA.
Weighted on-base average is similar to on-base percentage, except that it accounts for how a player reached base, and not that a player simply reached base. You can read a definition of the stat here. The simple explanation is that it weighs the value of how a player reaches base, so a double is worth more than a single with wOBA.
Using this stat, we can see quantifiable evidence of how so many Pirates hitters have declined under Haines.
The 2024 Trade Deadline Additions Have Collapsed
Seeking offensive help at the deadline, the Pirates made two low-key moves by adding Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Bryan De La Cruz.
With the prospects traded for these two (Charles McAdoo to Toronto for IKF and salary relief; Jun Seok-Shim and Garret Forrester to Miami for De La Cruz), it wouldn’t have taken much more to get an impact hitter. Someone like Randy Arozarena or Jazz Chisholm Jr. would have theoretically significantly upgraded this offense — in 2024 and beyond — for very little more than what the Pirates gave up for IKF and BDLC.
Kiner-Falefa was having a career year with Toronto in his age-29 season. He had a .331 wOBA, which is higher than his career .295 mark. Since joining the Pirates, Kiner-Falefa has dropped lower than the career mark, with a .285 wOBA.
This is in the same range that IKF had in the previous two seasons with the Yankees. You could argue that the Pirates bought high on a hitter having a career year, only to see him fall back to Earth immediately after the trade.
De La Cruz is another story. He has a career .309 wOBA, and had a .305 this year with the Marlins. The league average this year is a .311 wOBA, so De La Cruz has been a slightly below-average hitter. Since joining the Pirates, he’s gone 9-for-46, with his wOBA dropping to .184.
It’s not exciting to see the Pirates upgrade their offense with a guy who is below the league average, even if that’s still an upgrade for this offense. Watching that player turn into one of the worst hitters in the league immediately is a concern. It’s also not the first time this has happened this year, which makes me think that even Arozarena and Chisholm would have been negatively affected.
The 2024 Off-Season Additions Also Collapsed
Rowdy Tellez was the priority signing for the Pirates this past offseason. With a need at first base, Tellez was the first free agent brought in by the Pirates. He was coming off a season with a .288 wOBA, which was down from his .315 career mark.
During the first two months of this season, Tellez ranked 297th out of 302 qualified Major Leaguers in wOBA. He joined the team following a down year, and immediately became one of the worst hitters in the game.
Tellez went outside of the organization for help following those first two months. Since that point, he has been the fifth best first baseman in the league, in the company of Vlad Guerrero Jr., Freddie Freeman, Jake Burger, and Bryce Harper. Tellez has a .368 wOBA since the start of June, and there’s no way you can credit Haines or the Pirates for this incredible resurgence.
The other free agents haven’t been as fortunate.
Michael A. Taylor had a career year last year with the Twins. His .308 wOBA was the second best of his decade in the Majors, and higher than his .291 career wOBA. This year with the Pirates, he has a .252 wOBA, which is the worst mark in 11 seasons in the majors. Even if you look at the career numbers, that’s a 40 point drop.
Yasmani Grandal might be at the end of his time in baseball, and is nowhere near his career .334 mark. He did have a .288 wOBA last year, following a .263 the year prior. This year, Grandal has a .246 wOBA. That’s another 40 point drop from last year, and a near 20 point drop from 2022, which was his previous career low.
The Pirates traded for Edward Olivares over the offseason, after the outfielder had what looked to be a breakout season in Kansas City. His .329 wOBA on the season was inflated by a second half where he had a .376 wOBA. Olivares had a .326 wOBA in a smaller sample in 2022. Between the previous two seasons, he combined for a .328 wOBA in 559 plate appearances, which is higher than his career .309 mark.
Olivares has also collapsed with the Pirates this year. His .276 wOBA matches his rookie performance in 2020, which he had steadily improved upon every year until joining Pittsburgh. He’s currently in Triple-A, where he has a .307 wOBA.
The Back-Breaking Collapse
Last year, Ke’Bryan Hayes had his best offensive season in his young MLB career. His .324 wOBA was an improvement on his career mark that hovered around .300. What fueled his 2023 season was a second half breakout, when he posted a .366 wOBA.
This breakout came after Hayes turned to then-Altoona hitting coach Jon Nunnally for help. Jason Mackey reported on this last August, noting that Nunnally would drive to Pittsburgh to help Hayes when Nunnally had time, with the two talking on the phone to review the swing from Hayes.
The Pirates responded in the offseason, in what can only be seen as a vindictive response, by firing Nunnally.
In August 2022, I talked with Hayes at PNC Park, and he revealed to me that he worked with Nunnally a lot during the COVID shutdown in 2020. I didn’t even bring up Nunnally’s name at the time. Hayes had a .464 wOBA in 95 plate appearances in the Majors that September, following the initial work with Nunnally.
I also spoke with Nunnally in August 2022 about his approach to hitting development. That one conversation taught me more about hitting than the culmination of conversations I’ve had with hitting coaches in my then 14-year-career of covering player development.
This year, Hayes is having the worst year of his career. His wOBA has dropped to .261. There have been rumblings that he’s dealing with a back issue, which has been a historical problem for the Gold Glove winning third baseman. The fact that his defense has struggled indicates that something physical might be wrong.
Yet, I don’t think you can look at the results from all of the players above and determine that the back is the sole reason for the offensive decline.
How would you feel if you were Hayes?
He wasn’t getting the help he needed in Pittsburgh, so he sought outside help with someone inside the organization. The Pirates responded by firing this person, rather than promoting him to the Major League staff. With a contract that has Hayes in Pittsburgh through 2029, with a club option for 2030, you’d think the Pirates would validate the guy who won a Gold Glove and independently improved his hitting in the same year.
Instead, they fired the guy who helped him, and kept the guy he turned away from.
How much validation and support from the organization do you think Hayes feels this year? How much do you think that leads to the worst season of his career?
The worst thing is that the exact same situation happened again this year with Tellez, with the exact same outcome. The only difference is that the Pirates can’t fire Dee Brown for helping Tellez when Haines couldn’t do the job.
An Offensive Change is Long Overdue
When the Pirates fired Nunnally last season, that was the personal breaking point for me. That was the point where I knew this front office wasn’t serious, and was likely never going to win in Pittsburgh.
There have been some players who have improved this season. The Pirates added Joey Bart in an early-season trade, and watched the former second overall pick put up a .369 wOBA this year. Their own former first overall catcher, Henry Davis, had a .236 wOBA and is currently working in Triple-A. Bart immediately hit, so I don’t think you can credit Haines, especially with Davis struggling.
Bryan Reynolds is having one of the best seasons in his career, with his .354 wOBA ranking second to his .385 wOBA in 2021. The Pirates hired Haines ahead of the 2022 season, and Reynolds dropped to a .349 and .338 wOBA in the following years.
Nick Gonzales built a hitting facility in his backyard over the offseason, after Haines pointed out how much his swing had changed. The problem with this is that Gonzales’ swing changed in the development system led by Haines at the top. Gonzales made the necessary adjustments on his own, and has a .293 wOBA this season.
Oneil Cruz has only ever really worked under a Haines offense. His .333 wOBA this year is similar to his .329 career mark, and neither of those are on the level of the potential from Cruz to be one of the best hitters in the game.
I’ve said this over and over: I have yet to hear of a success story that came from working with Haines.
As shown above, there are far too many cases of players seeing a decline after joining the Haines-led system.
The fact that the Pirates stuck with Haines and fired Nunnally last offseason was all I needed to see. The fact that Tellez turned to the outside for help this year was only further confirmation. The fact that General Manager Ben Cherington did nothing to make a change this year, when the hitting was the biggest thing holding back the Pirates from being true contenders, is damning.
As I said earlier this year, Cherington has tied his fate to manager Derek Shelton — who is a former hitting coach — and hitting coach Andy Haines. He stuck with them through years of horrible results, and is continuing to stick with them this year when the Pirates were getting elite starting pitching.
There’s no way that you can give Cherington another chance at hiring a manager and changing the hitting program if he fires Shelton and Haines.
Cherington has already had chances to make a change. He’s doubled and tripled down. The fact that he kept the leadership the same in the Pittsburgh dugout, when it was obvious to people on the outside that a change needed to be made, shows that Cherington is not going to find a better alternative if he moves on from Haines or Shelton.
The Pirates need a change to their hitting approach, but the necessary changes expand well beyond Andy Haines.
