Which Teams Have the Pittsburgh Pirates Performed Best Against?

According to Baseball Reference, the Pittsburgh Pirates have been in existence since 1882. The franchise has been around for a long time. So, which teams have the Pirates had the most success against?

A quick sort by year of inception on Baseball Reference shows the Pittsburgh Pirates being tied for the second oldest franchise in all of Major League Baseball, trailing only the Cubs and Braves, both of whom are tied for first.

Because of the sheer age of the Pirates, they’ve played plenty of baseball games. Assuredly, they’ve also played a lot of games against certain teams. Any teams that were originally created with them are bound to be high on the list of games played, as well as divisional rivals once that format began to take shape.

There are seven teams the Pittsburgh Pirates have played over 2,000 games against, which includes three current divisional rivals, the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, and Cincinnati Reds. After the seventh team, the number of “games against” drops precipitously to 752 games (the New York Mets).

There were two obvious ways to determine who the Pirates played the best: total wins and winning percentage. Because of how numbers work out, there are going to be really high winning percentages against teams they only played a handful of times. So we’ll focus on total wins and then winning percentage that meets my somewhat arbitrary criteria.

Because the Pittsburgh Pirates are such an old franchise, they’ve played more than the other 29 teams currently in Major League Baseball. Over the course of their long history, the Pirates have played 43 different teams, like the Washington Statesmen and Richmond Virginians, both of which only lasted one season in 1884.

The Philadelphia Phillies

Now, to move on to the team against which the Pittsburgh Pirates have the highest winning percentage. The arbitrary criteria I have decided to implement is that the two teams must have met at least 500 times in history. The opponent that fits that mold? The Pirates’ in-state adversary, the Philadelphia Phillies.

Over 2,297 meetings, the Pirates hold a 1,129-1,069 edge over Philadelphia, which works out to a .533 winning percentage.

Of late, the Pirates success against the Phillies has been a mixed bag. A season ago, they dropped the season series 2-4. The last time the Bucs commanded a winning record over the Phils was 2017, when the team went 5-2. In the 2010s, the Pirates have maintained a 7-3 edge by season.

The Pirates have two winning streaks against the Phillies that reached 14 consecutive wins. The first was between September 27, 1921, to August 10, 1922. The second came between August 6, 1990, to August 14, 1991. Both of those two latter seasons saw the Pirates lose in the NLCS, first to the Reds in ’90, the eventual World Series Champions, and then to the Braves in ’91.

Both teams managed to max out their runs scored totals in a single game at 23, the Pirates doing it first on July 18, 1895, then the Phillies following suit almost exactly five years later on July 13, 1900. I was unable to find any box score data on that 1895 match up.

The longest game between the two clubs came on June 9, 1949, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, in front of 4,095 onlookers. The game lasted the total of two games going 18 innings in three hours and 45 minutes, and eventually saw the Phillies take the win.

Ray Poat took the hill for Pittsburgh, while Russ Meyer pitched for Philadelphia. Poat pitched six innings and gave up three runs, but reliever Murry Dickson ended up taking the loss after allowing one run over 11.2 innings of work. Schoolboy Rowe blew the save for the Phillies and Jim Konstanty pitched nine scoreless innings to round out the Phillies pitching situation.

Pirates’ right fielder Johnny Hopp had the best offensive outing for Pittsburgh, going 4-for-8 with three doubles and two RBIs.

That was a year in which the Pirates went 71-83 under manager Billy Meyer, finishing sixth in the National League. The Yankees defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers four games to one to take the World Series crown.

Other teams the Pittsburgh Pirates have had success against… and a few they have not

To round things out, here are a few other teams that the Pittsburgh Pirates hold a lifetime advantage over: the Braves (.517), Cardinals (.508), and Reds (.504). As for some teams they have not fared quite as well against: the Giants (.469) and Dodgers (.467). So, a pair of two NL West clubs have not been kind to the Pirates in their long history.

Once games resume, the Pirates’ history will continue to grow. They’ll meet all of these teams many more times, as well as much of the rest of baseball, adding to the history of all the clubs involved.

In fact, this season, the Pirates may play a few different teams regularly. In one reported plan that MLB officials have kicked around, the Pirates would play all of their games in Florida against Grapefruit League foes this season. If that were to occur, their divisional rivals in 2020 would be the Blue Jays, Tigers, and Yankees. Oh, and those darn Phillies as well.

Here’s to hoping there will be some form of baseball in 2020 for the Pirates to continue to add to their history. Even if it is just a modified season.