This Week In Bad Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Infographics

This Week In Bad Pirates Baseball Infographics:

After seven games, we thought we would take a close look at, well, let’s look at what everyone is talking about…the Pittsburgh Pirates offense.   The screaming outlier is of course–it’s only seven games, it’s only seven games, it’s only seven games.  Without further ado…here we go:

Wow!  The Pirates raised their average from .119 to .126 with the win last evening.  At that rate, in just eleven more games the Bucs will be batting over the Mendoza line as a team!  So yeh, the Pirates have the worst offense in Major League Baseball after seven games.  The Bucs have two wins.

As we look at the specifics…HOLY JUMPING JINGLE BALLS!  Where are the hits?

Starling Marte and Andrew McCutchen lead the way.  But the rest of the roster isn’t hitting above .168.  The big question is how long will this last?

After seven games, only three Pirates have more than three hits.

Russell Martin is still looking for his first hit of the season.  It was mentioned repeatedly that Martin was brought in for his glove after hitting just .211 last season with the New York Yankees. Martin has stung a few balls thus far, it’s only a matter of time until some of those start dropping in for hits.

The bigger challenge for the Pirates has been making contact.  The whiff rates are rather alarming:  Petey has a 46% clip.  Travis Snider 36%.  Clint Barmes 35%.  GFJ has a 33% rate.  McKenry 25%.  Marte has struckout 24% of the time.

The strikeouts will reduce as the Bucs move away from lining up with the oppositions top pitchers.

The batting average on balls in play is also due to increase.  Numerous line drives are not finding grass–(i.e. Neil Walker)  Looking a bit deeper and not including Marte and McCutchen, all of the other Pirates batters have a BABIP of .182 and below.   That will improve.

The concerning factor would be the walk rates, which can be attributed to some strong starting pitching from the bad guys–but also the Pirates aren’t historically a patient club at the plate.  Michael McKenry, Gaby Sanchez, Russell Martin and Walker are the only position players with a double digit walk rate.  The big question is will the team be able to grind out more at-bats against some of the lesser starters in the league?    It’s the one thing that the team can improve upon.