The 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates: Valuing Advanced Metrics Over Traditional Stats

Scoring Runs

How do you determine who the most clutch hitters are on your team? Well I’ll tell you how you don’t – by using RBIs. That’s also how the Pittsburgh Pirates viewed that stat.

RBIs are like pitcher wins but for batters; a dependent variable of many things outside of the player’s control. In this case, it’s runners on base, how often the runners in front of you get on base or how many chances you get to have multiple RBI opportunities, and where you’re batting in the line up. A player who hits in the middle of the order and has a .270 batting average/.800 OPS with men on will likely have more RBIs than someone who bats lead off and bats .300 with a .880 OPS with men on base simply because the guy in the middle of the order will get way more chances to drive in multiple runs at a time than a lead off man.

Russell Martin was acquired for his defense, but he was a clutch bat when the Pirates needed him to be. Martin only had 53 RBIs in 2012, but to see how good he was when it came time to clutch up, you have to look at his splits. Martin stepped to the plate 98 times in high leverage situations according to Baseball Refernce. In those 98 chances, Martin racked up 23 hits where over half of them went for extra bases (six doubles, six home runs). He also walked eight times and struck out 19 times. In 2013, Martin carried over that kind of clutch batting hitting .282/.392/.409 in 131 plate appearances in high leverage situations. However, he only had 55 RBIs in 2013.

One of the under the radar Pirates during 2013 was middle infielder Jordy Mercer. But. I mean, how clutch was he really? 27 RBIs? Well remember this – many of his plate appearances came out of the two hole, or down at number eight.

But when he stepped to the plate with an opportunity to drive in runs, he took full advantage of it. With runners in scoring position Mercer had a .308/.418/.418 batting line. But he only got 80 plate appearances with RISP and 147 plate appearances when a man was on base, explaining his low RBI total.

One of the Pittsburgh Pirates best bench pieces in high leverage moments was Travis Snider. Acquired by the Pirates at the 2012 trade deadline, he may have only had a RBI total of 25 in 111 games and 285 plate appearances, but he was who you wanted at the plate when you needed a big hit off the bench.

In terms of FanGraphs’ high leverage situations, Snider had 36 plate appearances. He posted a .364/.417/.758 line. That comes out to a 222 wRC+. Snider, a 4th outfielder by 2013 whose  former top prospect status had all but faded, was 122% better than the MLB average when it came into high leverage situations. Only six other players had a higher wRC+ than Snider, and only seven had a higher OPS than him in those situations.

But overall, the Pirates’ pinch hitters also were clutch. Coming off the bench usually means you’re coming into a situation where you have an opportunity to advance a base runner, or drive in a run or two. When coming off the bench with at least one man on base, the Bucs’ pinch hitters had a 101 wRC+. That was the 6th highest mark of 2013 among National League teams. Pinch hitters also made loud contact 28.4% of the time, which was 3rd highest in the NL.

The 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates had the 20th highest RBI total and 9th highest in the NL. But that doesn’t mean they were far from being a team that could clutch up when they needed to. They had seven players with a wRC+ of 100 or better when they stepped to the plate with men on base. Their 96 wRC+ with men on base was 7th in the NL. They clocked in with a 30.8% hard hit rate as a team with men on, the 4th highest in all of baseball, and 2nd highest in the NL.