Pittsburgh Pirates Report Card for week of 4/28-5/4

Hitting: C-

I feel like I might have gone a little easy on the Pirates attack. Then again, they did have two 10+ run outbursts this week, so this road trip was not a total loss. Anybody who follows this team should be aware of how bad the offense has been thus far. Thursday afternoon in Cincy perfectly fitted for the Pirates struggles.

Pittsburgh’s mound opponent for its series finale with the Reds was Tim Adleman, a 29-year-old journeyman who has less than 20 games of big league experience. Nonetheless, the Pirates offense struggled, scoring just two runs in six innings against Adleman in the 4-2 loss.

Things are pretty smoky for the Bucco lineup. Gregory Polanco and Andrew McCutchen are both hitting below .240, and those two are the biggest weapons in the arsenal without Starling Marte and Jung-Ho Kang. The fact that the .157 hitting John Jaso hitting in the top half of the batting order is even a thought in manager Clint Hurdle‘s mind should give a pretty good idea of where things are at right now.

Yes, a lot of the Pirates issues offensively are because of the stupidity of Marte and Kang. But there are still plenty of talented bats that are not performing, and that needs to change if this team has hopes of making some noise. The good news is, at this point, there is nowhere to go but up.