Pirates' weak offense is crushing their most talented hitter and hurting the rotation

If you’ve been following the Pittsburgh Pirates this year, then you’d know that their offense hasn’t been good, and that’s putting it nicely. Their starters are hurt the most clearly by their lack of hitting, as their pitchers consistently give them quality outings and opportunities to win, yet the offense has failed to capitalize. Paul Skenes has been the victim of this more times than anyone should be proud of. But the Pirates’ pitching isn’t the only thing getting hurt by this phenomenon: their best hitter right now, Oneil Cruz, is also suffering the effects of having no lineup depth around him.

Cruz’s numbers in the box aren’t bad; far from it, actually. He is slashing a solid .221/.343/.447 with a .344 wOBA and 118 wRC+. He has already hit 13 home runs and has a .226 isolated slugging percentage. Cruz’s walk rate went from a respectable 8.5% rate last year to 14.8% this season. He has used his ability to get on base at a good rate to significant effect, going 25-for-28 in stolen base attempts.

But Cruz could be so much better than this. Cruz has a .374 xwOBA and .496 xSLG%. He is also in the 100th percentile of exit velocity, coming in at 96.4 MPH, and the 100th percentile of barrel rate at 23%. That means that nearly a quarter of his batted balls have a perfect combination of exit velocity and launch angle. Cruz has the hardest hit ball in the Statcast Era as well. Cruz has also cut his chase rate down from 31.7% to 26.2%. Unfortunately, the slugger is one of the least challenged batters in the league right now.

Pirates' Oneil Cruz not getting the chance he deserves to impact the ball hard

There are 188 batters this season who have seen at least 750 pitches. Cruz has the fourth-highest out-of-zone pitch rate at 54.1%. The only batters that have a higher rate are Bryce Harper, Yainer Diaz, and Salvador Perez. He also sees the fewest pitches in what Baseball Savant considers the heart of the strike zone at only 22.3%. For reference, the average amount of pitches in the heart of the zone is 27.5%, while only 49.5% of pitches are thrown outside the zone.

While pitchers obviously don’t want to live in the heart of the zone to someone who can punish mistake pitches like Cruz, we’re still seeing a batter get pitched around more frequently than Aaron Judge, who has only seen 49.3% of pitches outside the zone and 25.8% of pitches within the heart of the zone. Keep in mind that Judge is batting an otherworldly .453 with a .941 SLUGGING PERCENTAGE on pitches in the zone. Jacob Wilson has the second-highest BA (.405), and Shohei Ohtani has the next-best slugging percentage (.776) on pitches in the zone, and yet Judge sees more hittable pitches than Oneil Cruz.

Kyle Schwarber, who is a similar batter to Cruz, has a 52.5% out-of-zone percentage and 26.7% heart-of-the-zone rate. If the Pirates don’t have much muscle behind Cruz in the lineup, then there’s no reason for pitchers to challenge him. Right now, Cruz and Andrew McCutchen are the only batters in the Pirates’ lineup with an above-average OPS+ in at least 200 plate appearances.

If the Pirates don’t see a problem in the fact that Cruz isn’t seeing as many pitches in the zone as Judge this year, who has a batting average that wouldn’t look out of place in a Tony Gwynn triple-slash, a slugging percentage that is coming straight from early-2000s Barry Bonds, and has a slugging percentage on in-zone pitches better than most MVPs have OPSs in a season on pitches in the zone, then it speaks volumes about how the Pirates go about lineup construction. There’s very little behind Cruz to make opposing pitchers challenge him. Cruz cannot carry the lineup on his own, especially if pitchers don’t want to pitch to him (and for a good reason).