More on The Pittsburgh Pirates Theft Epidemic

The Pittsburgh Pirates have an epidemic.   You know that and it probably scares you just as badly as it scares me.

We looked back at how caught stealing rates for Tony Sanchez in the minors.    As you can read below, Sanchez has a 24 percent success rate at gunning runners out on the basepaths.

So we wondered how that compared to Rod Barajas and Michael McKenry.  We were a bit apprehensive to even look at the numbers.

So it’s fair to look back at Rod Barajas and see how well he threw out runners in the minor leagues.  We are just looking at facts here that we can see.  The pitching staffs might have held runners on better, blah, blah, blah, but did Rod Barajas throw our runners better in the minor leagues.

Yes he did.

Big time.  Hot Rod had a 38 percent caught stealing rate racking up 199 thieves on the basepaths.

So how about Michael McKenry?   Did he throw out runners more effectively than he did this season when he was in the minor leagues?

Yes he did.

McKenry was at a 36 percent caught stealing rate gunning down 166 thieves.

Now let’s look at how successful Rod Barajas and Michael McKenry have been on the big league level.

McKenry threw out 13 of 39 runners last season which was a 25 percent rate.  That is down to 13 percent this season.

Barajas threw out 26 percent of the runners last season with L.A.  He got 20 of 60.  But in 2010, he was bad gunning down just 15 percent while with the Mets and Dodgers.

The bottom line for me is this, the throws over the past month by Barajas and McKenry have been really poor.  For Mac, most every throw is tailing to the right and Barajas just doesn’t look like the pop time is there anymore.

The pitchers aren’t helping either catcher and nobody seems to have a solution.  That’s what is the most troubling for us.  The problem has existed all season long and it’s not improving, it’s actually getting worse, reaching epidemic levels last night when the Brewers stole from the Bucs like the nerd at lunchtime.

So if McKenry and Barajas were better at throwing out runners when they were in the minors than Sanchez has been, will Sanchez’s numbers decrease to numbers even below those of Barajas and McKenry?

Now that’s really epidemic shit.  Somebody needs to take ownership of this problem for the Pirates.  It’s absolute horseshit that this has been going on for this long with pathetic answers by the Pirates leadership.

Where was a pitchout last night?  Why were the pitchers ignoring Braun on the basepaths?  The strategy of the opposition is very clear–steal at will.

Where is the counter strategy of the Pittsburgh Pirates?