The Pittsburgh Pirates’ No All-Star Game All-Star Team

First Base

Orlando Merced

Orlando Merced played a lot of right field with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but he also played a fair bit of first base. Plus many of the Pirates’ greatest first basemen of all time made at least one all-star appearance throughout their entire careers.

Now that doesn’t mean that Merced got this spot by default. He was a productive batter throughout his time with the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 2980 plate appearances, Merced had a .283/.364/.428 line, .350 wOBA, 114 wRC+, and 113 OPS+. Merced was more of an on-base/contact hitter than a power threat. He only had a .145 isolated slugging percentage throughout his career but drew walks at an 11.4% rate while keeping his strikeouts to just a 14.2% rate. All told, Merced had a 13.7 fWAR with the Pirates, which ranks 5th among Pirates’ 1B’s with at least 1000 plate appearances.

Merced’s best season was in 1993. During that campaign, the lefty batter hit .313/.414/.443 with 8 home runs but had a strong .381 wOBA, and 132 wRC+. Merced posted a career-best fWAR this year with a 3.4 mark. He also walked over 10 more times than he struck out with a 77/64 BB/K ratio in 527 plate appearances.

Merced was a solid fielder at first base with only -1 total zone run at the position. He was much better defensively in right field but was more than capable of handling first base. Plus he was only considered a below-average defender by TZ twice at 1B from 1990 up through 1996, his entire time with the Bucs.

Although once Merced left Pittsburgh, he wasn’t nearly as productive of a batter. He only would go on to have a .759 OPS, .331 wOBA, 95 OPS+, and 94 wRC+ throughout his final 1552 career plate appearances which spanned across six more MLB seasons (he did not appear in a major league game in 2000). He spent this time with the Toronto Blue Jays, Minnesota Twins, Chicago Cubs, Montreal Expos, and then finally the Houston Astros.

Overall, it was a close race between him, Kevin Young, and Craig Wilson. However, I gave Merced the edge here as Wilson only played 7 seasons in the major leagues and Young only had 2 seasons where he had at least 2 fWAR.