Pittsburgh Pirates: Three Goals For Shortstop In 2021

Goal Number One – Find A Starter

The first goal for the shortstop position in 2021 is to determine the every day starter for this season. Like mentioned before, Tucker, Newman and Gonzalez are all fighting for their right to claim the role here.

If you go off of who has gotten the most time this spring starting at short to be the every day starter there, Gonzalez would have the slight advantage here. Gonzalez has started a total of seven games this spring, where as Newman has only started five games.

Coming in last for starting games this spring is Tucker, who is sitting at four. Even though Tucker has started the least amount of games, this should not be the only thing that is considered when trying to figure out who is going to start for the Pittsburgh Pirates on April 1st in Chicago. This is so, since Tucker was out for a chunk of this spring for a hand contusion that he suffered earlier this year. The other aspect to look at would be who is hitting the best currently this spring.

There is a clear advantage for who should get the starting nod on Opening Day when you compare the hitting stats between the three players. Newman is leading the others by miles. Newman is batting .643 with and on-base percentage of .722 and an OPS of 1.437.

The next closest player to these stats would be Gonzalez, who is batting .375/.400/.900. All of these categories are all at least .250 lower than those of Newman’s, which is a considerable difference.

Based on everything that is given, it should be safe to say that while not set in stone, Newman should end up being the starting shortstop on Opening Day this season.

Goal Number Two – Improve The Defense

The second goal is to improve defensively for all three shortstop candidates. Last season was a poor season for the shortstop position defensively. Gonzalez started the most games last season, 36, and had five errors in that span. That is an average of about one error every seven games.

Next was Newman who started 22 games and also managed to commit five errors. This equates to an error about every four and a half games. Newman and Gonzalez both tied for eight for the most errors committed by National League shortstops.

The damage defensively does not stop here though. The defensive runs saved above average per 1,200 innings (Rtot/yr) totals were astronomically bad last season. Gonzalez had a Rtot/yr of -4, which is not horrid but was still four runs under the league average.

The real problem in this category was Newman. Newman managed to get a Rtot/yr of -20. This total is just completely unacceptable from a defensive perspective. The Pittsburgh Pirates were not expected to win many games last year as it was, but stats like these certainly helped to get the number one pick, especially with how bad the hitting was last season.

Goal Number Three – Improve The Offense

The third goal is to improve the hitting stats for all three of the potential shortstop candidates. Out of all three of the players competing for the starting job, none of the three was able to bat above .227, which is really bad.

Lets start with the worst of the three, Tucker. Tucker batted .220 with an OBP of .252 and an OPS of .527. When you combine all of these hitting stats and compare it to the average player using runs batting (Rbat) it shows that Tucker was worth eight less runs than the average hitter.

Next is Newman. He batted .224 with an OBP of .281 and an OPS of .556. If you look at his Rbat it shows that while the numbers appear to be slightly better than Tucker’s, Newman was worth eight runs less than the average hitter as well.

The best hitter, average wise, last year out of these three was Gonzalez. He batted .227 with an OBP of .255 and an OPS of .614. While his OPS and average was higher than both of the other players, Gonzalez was worth the least when it came to Rtot. Gonzalez managed to have a Rtot of ten runs below the average hitter, which is worse than the eight below that Tucker and Newman posted.

As made clear by all of these stats combined, the entire shortstop group needs to really improve their hitting this season if they want to change the perception that they are one of the worst positional groups that the Pirates have right now.