Pittsburgh Pirates: Starting Pitching Struggles & More Takeaways From Embarrassing Series Loss vs A's

Offense wastes scoring opportunities, Pirates get embarrassed

Oakland's pitching staff is well on its way to being one of the worst in MLB history. Perhaps, even the absolute worst in MLB history. Despite this, they were able to stymie the Pirate offense whenever the Bucs got runners in scoring position.

A's pitching allowed 21 hits, walked 17 batters, and hit a batter. Despite this, the Pirates failed to capitalize for more runs. The Pirates left 27 runners on base, hit into five double plays, and were just 4-for-31 with runners in scoring position in this series.

It was one poor at-bat after another for the Pirates with RISP. The issues with RISP go back even further than just this series. Even when sweeping the Cardinals the Pirates struggling with RISP. In their last six games Pirate batters are just 11-for-62 with RISP.

Failure to hit with RISP was a major issue for the Pirate offense during their struggles in the month of May. The past six games those issues have popped back up again leading to plenty of frustration around the Pirate offense.

All in all it was a flat out embarassing series for the team. Even in the game the Pirates won on Monday night they should have lost. However, with the A's being the A's they found a way to give the game away.

The Pirates were unprepared for the series, pitched poorly, and hit poorly. They were throughouly out played, out pitched, out hit, and out coached. Just a flat out unacceptable performance agaisnt a historically bad team.