Pittsburgh Pirates: Strong Pitching and More Takeaways From Series Split

Pirate offense relies on the extra base hit

The Pittsburgh Pirates recorded 14 hits in this brief two-game series. Of these 14 hits 6 of them went for extra bases. That is a 43% extra base hit rate during the series by the Pirates and their hitters.

While extra base hits are obviously great it can be risky. This type of offense can lead to all or nothing type of issues, which was seen in this series. Tuesday afternoon the lone Pirate run came on a solo home run by Bryan Reynolds.

In the loss the Pirates got five base runners to second base and failed to score any of them. This included wasting a leadoff double by Roberto Pérez in the 3rd inning, a one-out double by Jake Marisnick in the 5th inning, and Ke’Bryan Hayes singling to start the 6th inning before stealing second base to get into scoring position with no one out.

Pittsburgh once again rode the extra base hit on Wednesday afternoon, but this time they cashed it in. While a Hayes double did not produce any runs, a 1st inning 3-run home run by Ben Gamel gave them an early lead and a Kevin Newman triple in the in the 3rd inning brought in a pair of runs.

Seeing the Pirates rack up extra base hits is not a total surprise. New hitting coach Andy Haines emphasizes driving the ball for power and the team led the Grapefruit League in home runs. This is not to say the Pirates will be among the league leaders in home runs or anything of the sort, but it would not be a surprise to see them collect more extra base hits than people expect. That said, they need to compliment it with clutch hitting the way they did on Wednesday.