Pittsburgh Pirates: Struggles Against the Brewers Continue & More Series Takeaways

A mostly good series with runners in scoring position

One of the most frustrating parts of the series loss for the Pirates is that they actually overcame one of their biggest issues of late. In recent weeks hitting with runners in scoring position has been a major problem, but the team hit .354 with RISP against Milwaukee.

Friday night we won't really touch on since the team rallied to win on Carlos Santana's walk off home run. Saturday afternoon the Bucs went 5-for-9 with RISP and left only three runners on base. However, between failing to get a hit until the 6th inning and the pitching imploding, the strong performance with RISP wasn't enough.

Sunday afternoon, however, the RISP woes returned and that played a role in the Bucs dropping the series finale and in turn the series. Pirate batters were just 1-for-7 with RISP in Sunday's 6-3 loss and left six runners on base.

While they hit poorly with RISP on Sunday, poor performance with RISP throughout the series was not a contributing factor to a series loss the way it has been recently. With even remotely competent pitching on Saturday the Bucs likely would have still won that game. Even with the poor performance with RISP on Sunday, with better defense and less free base runners allowed by the pitching staff, they still could have walked away victorious.