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 Chicago Cubs

First off, by number of sheer wins, the Pittsburgh Pirates have bested the Cubs 1,287 times. This series is actually very close. The Pirates winning percentage against the Cubbies is .512, leaving them with a 1,287-1,229 record. This series, of course, grows higher and higher every season by virtue of the two teams being in the same division.

More recently, the Pirates have struggled against the Cubs. The last time they carried a winning record against Chicago through 162 (or thereabouts, depending on the season), was 2014, when Pittsburgh went 14-5. Last season, the Pirates dropped the series 8-11.

Thanks to Baseball Reference, we can break down the series a little bit more with some interesting factoids.

The longest winning streak for the Pirates over the course of the long series was Sept 21, 1978 to June 22, 1979, when the Buccos captured 11 consecutive victories. That tops the Cubs’ longest streak by a game, which occurred twice: once between 1890 and 1891, then more recently between 2007 and 2008.

On September 16, 1975, the Pirates plated 22 runs, the most they’ve ever scored against Chicago. That contest was held at Wrigley Field with only 4,932 in attendance to witness the Pirates’ onslaught. John Candelaria started the game for the Pirates, going seven strong, surrendering no runs, and only three hits. On the other side, however, Rick Reuschel was battered to the tune of 0.1 innings pitched, allowing eight earned runs on six hits and two walks. Cub reliever Tom Dettore tossed 3.2 innings, while allowing eight runs (seven earned) on seven hits and two walks.

The Pirates registered 24 hits in the contest, only five of which were for extra bases, which includes a Richie Hebner and Dave Parker home run. Parker was also the RBI leader in the game, totaling five on two hits and a sacrifice fly. Second baseman Rennie Stennett was the hit king for the game, going an incredible seven-for-seven, which included a pair of doubles and a triple.

At the conclusion of that late season drubbing, the Pirates were 86-64, with a six game lead over the Phillies in the National League East Division. In the playoffs that year, the Pirates were swept three games to none by the Reds, the eventual World Series winner over the Red Sox.

The longest game in the two teams’ history came on July 6, 1980. It was a Sunday game at Three Rivers Stadium, with 25,994 in attendance. Resuchel (once again) started the game for Chicago, while Bert Blyleven was on the bump for Pittsburgh. The Cubs would employ eight pitchers, while the Pirates would send in five to slog through 20(!) innings.

Both starting pitchers allowed four runs. But after that, it was a lot of zeros. Blyleven was looking for the complete game when, in the top of the ninth, Cliff Johnson hit a home run to left field to knot the game at four. In an occasion that would never see the light of day now, Blyleven returned to the mound for the 10th inning. He then promptly picked up a strikeout and then a pair of ground outs to conclude his 10-inning day.

It wasn’t until the bottom of the 20th inning with one out that Omar Moreno singled to left field off Dennis Lamp, driving in catcher Ed Ott, securing the marathon victory for the Bucs. The Pirates went to 42-37 after that game, while sitting in third place in the East, only a game back of the first place Montreal Expos. The Pirates failed to make the playoffs that season, finishing 83-79, a year in which the Phillies knocked off the Royals for the World Series.

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.