Pittsburgh Pirates finding more success away from PNC Park

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Jun 7, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates relief pitcher Mark Melancon (35) reacts with catcher Chris Stewart (19) after recording the final out against the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field. The Pirates defeated the Braves 3-0. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

The 2014 Pittsburgh Pirates were a bad team away from PNC Park, going 37-44 on the road, scoring 332 runs while allowing 332.

57 games into the 2015 season, the team is a much better road team, standing at 16-16 with 133 runs scored against 112 runs allowed. Fresh off of a 7-3 road trip, the Pirates look like a competent team while wearing the away jerseys. Why the turnaround year to year with largely the same roster? The answer lies in a few different places, and we’ll take a look at a few of them here.

Take a look at some selected hitting and pitching stats for the Pirates so far in 2015.

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So what to make of these stats? Let’s start with the offense. The Pittsburgh Pirates offense blossomed over the past month, and we can see from these stats that a lot of the maturation happened on the road. Despite playing in 2 fewer road games than the Washington Nationals, the Pirates rank third in runs scored on the road, with an average of 4.06. This is actually right on par with the 2014 club, which scored runs on the road at a 4.09 clip. In terms of extra base hits, the Bucs also had comparable numbers year-to-year, ranking third in end-of-year extra base hits and fourth in runs. I included the strikeout numbers to illustrate that even for their good road performance offensively, they can still take strides.

The difference between the ’15 and ’14 Bucco road teams starts to come to light when you look at the pitching. Ranking second in the NL in ERA this year (yes, second to the St. Louis Cardinals) at 2.99 is a marked improvement from the 3.80 road ERA last season (good for seventh in the 15 team National League). Looking further at the pitching, we can see a few other highlights that would explain the Pirates’ pitching staff’s road excellence. The team has only given up 17 home runs on the road in 2015, .53 per game and good for second in the league (yes, second to the St. Louis Cardinals). This is far below the NL average of 25 total HR per team. Opposing hitters are batting .248 in their home parks against the Bucs, ten points lower than the league average of .258 In 2014, the Bucs gave up .88 home runs on the road per game and the opposition hit them at a .253 clip. While at first those may seem like incremental improvements, the cumulative effect can’t be undersold – the Bucs are giving up less home runs on the road this year while teams aren’t hitting as well against them. This can be the difference in the close road games that the Pirates seemed to struggle with in 2014. All of this has led the Pirates to give up almost a full earned run less per game.

So from these team-level items, we can see that the Pirates are still scoring just as many runs but have limited damage from big flies while giving up less overall runs per game. What about individual performance? Let’s take a look at some of the Pittsburgh Pirates road standouts, starting with the offense

Next: Individual road hitting

Pittsburgh Pirates 2015 hitting statistics – Away

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We can see here that a lot of the big cogs in the Pirates offense are getting it done away from PNC Park. Francisco Cervelli leads the team in batting average in away games, impressively slugging seven of his road hits for doubles. Andrew McCutchen, Pedro Alvarez, and Starling Marte are all putting up impressive run-producing numbers on the road, doubly impressive upon realization that the team is not even through half of its road schedule. However, there is some room for improvement here. In addition to their toothbrushes and phone chargers, Marte and Alvarez take their free-swinging mindsets on roadtrips, coming in at a 30.8% and 30.6% K-rate, respectively. Marte and Alvarez combine for 28.1% of the team’s total road strikeouts. There is massive room for improvement in this regard. Also of note – Jung Ho Kang actually has the worst road batting average on the club, barely over the Mendoza Line at .209. This would figure to be a storyline all season, as Kang will have to work harder to familiarize himself with foreign ballparks and delivery sightlines.

Let’s now look at the road pitching on an individual level.

Next: Individual road pitching

Pittsburgh Pirates 2015 pitching statistics – Away

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First off, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I just now picked my jaw up off of the floor after seeing that Antonio Bastardo has not allowed a run, earned or otherwise, on the road this year, with batters hitting just .185 against him.

Ok now that you’ve recovered from that shock, let’s look at the rest of the club. A couple of things jump out. First, Francisco Liriano and Gerrit Cole are absolute road warriors, with beastly ERAs and K/9 numbers. Cole’s 10.05 strikeouts per nine leaps off the page, smacks you in the face, and basically tells you to enjoy the fact that he’s not a free agent until 2020. Liriano’s numbers are very encouraging coming off of the richest contract in Pirates free agent history. Looking up and down the rest of the staff, we see that A.J. Burnett, Mark Melancon, and Arquimedes Caminero have been solid-to-rock solid. Melancon’s road stats in particular should serve as yet another piece of evidence to squelch the idea that the Pirates must look elsewhere for a closer.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jeff Locke‘s struggles seem to follow him when he packs his bags. In fact, Locke is a much better pitcher at home than on the road, as batters hit him .110 points higher than at PNC. One surprise on this table is Jared Hughes. Of the 10 runs Hughes has let slip in 2015, seven of those came on the road, where batters hit him at a .340 clip, leading to his ugly road ERA of 4.61. Hughes is a much better pitcher at PNC, boasting a 10.0 k/bb ratio (a metric that dips to 3.0 on the road) and much more control (1 walk as opposed to 4 freebies on the road)

For the Pittsburgh Pirates to make a serious run at the Cardinals for the NL Central this year, they will have to continue to scratch and claw to do better on the road. More roadtrips like the recent west coast swing would be a welcomed sight for a traditionally poor road team. With road trips coming up against the Washington Nationals and Detroit Tigers looming before the all-star break, we may get a better sense of the team’s performance on the road before the midsummer classic.

Next: Complete Day 1 Analysis of the 2015 MLB Draft

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