Don’t Make Too Much (Or Too Little) of Pirates’ Start
The offense is hot, the starting pitching is good, but it’s a LONG Pirates season
Photo by Carlos Osorio/AP
I feel like when I have any level of writer’s block, social media overreactions tend to pull me out of the rut. For this piece, two generally hyperbolic themes seem to have emerged on Twitter. In camp one, there is “the Bucco’s are back” cheerleaders. Make no mistake — winning the first three games of the season is an objectively good thing. However, suggesting the sweep portends how the team will play in September might require some imagination. The other camp seems to have developed as a reaction to the first. They seem to suggest that one series means nothing at all. In the grand scheme of a 162 game schedule this may be true, but I have a hard time believing some skeptics are genuinely appealing to sample size.
Despite the lengthy schedule, first impressions are a big deal in a baseball season. People tend to get caught up in April and often it takes until June for performances and perception to stabilize. This is true for good and bad starts by teams and players. I highly recommend avoiding the impulse to jump to conclusions. Consider this. If we moved this Detroit series to the end of August would anyone actually think much of it? Probably not.
One series does not make a season. Neither does one series plus one game and while it’s nice to have a strong start, the Pirates have played 2.5% of the season and have secured less than 5% of the 88 wins Alex expects they’ll need to secure a playoff berth this season. They haven’t scratched the surface of 2018 yet and while starting 4-0 is certainly better than 0-4, they still need to win more games the rest of way then they have the entirety of the last season to get over .500 for the year.
Let’s not pretend like we ought to place deposits for playoff tickets just yet, but let’s also not give players individual awards either. The offense is off to a great start. In a weird way, I don’t miss early season Andrew McCutchen clogging up the middle of the lineup till May 15. Gregory Polanco, Starling Marte and Josh Bell all have gotten off to great starts at the plate. All three could be making a down payment on a career year. Polanco could be finally breaking out, but is he truly on his way to a 10 fWAR season he is on pace for? Probably not.
At the same time though, a level of intrigue surrounds this team. Largely written off by the fanbase before the season started, the Pirates have a number of players who seem like they’re hitting the make or break type season. The quick start only enhances that, because interesting pieces have contributed to the early victories. Pitchers like Chad Kuhl, Tyler Glasnow, and Trevor Williams and a hitter like Adam Frazier are towing the line between establishing themselves and flaming out completely. Kuhl has middle of the rotation stuff, but back of the rotation results so far. Glasnow is a big deal in a small role at the moment, but I’m not sure if there is a more interesting long reliever in baseball. Williams had some issues hitting the corners in his first start, but he managed to hold the Tigers hitless and scoreless for 6 innings. Frazier’s got a uncharacteristically high K-rate at the moment, but he has the look of the true lead off hitter. Any of the above could become regulars, but a couple of bad months could send them back to Indy.
Then there are the shiny new toys acquired in the summer trades. Don’t we all love shiny new toys? We’ve seen a fair amount of Colin Moran and Michael Feliz already to mixed reviews. Moran’s dramatic grand slam in his first Pirates plate appearance at PNC Pack against the Twins will endear him to fans despite his .091 BABIP. Feliz now owns two holds despite his small sample size inflated ERA and BB/9. We haven’t even had a look at Joe Musgrove yet, thanks to lingering injuries, and Kyle Crick from the McCutchen trade started the year in the minors rather than the bullpen. We’ll have to wait a little longer on the rest.
The Pirates early season success probably doesn’t mean much, and can go south quickly. There is plenty of work to be done for sure to continue the wave. Player and team performances are too small a sample to draw strong conclusions from. Yet, it’s difficult to call the start anything but interesting, certainly more interesting than opening with a much worse record.
Steve DiMiceli
Steve is a naturalized yinzer hailing originally from just north of Allentown, PA. He came to Pittsburgh to attend Duquesne University and decided to stick around after graduation. Steve is best known for his contributions to Duquesne hoops community as the owner of the Duquesne Dukes forum on Yuku and as the former editor of We Wear the Ring on the Fansided network. He is an avid Pirates fan, home cook and policy nerd. He is the co-founder of the Point of Pittsburgh. Easily irritated by people who misuse the word regress.
Not trying to be pessimistic, and 4-0 is better than 0-4, of course, but we started out 2016 4-0. We swept the Cardinals in the very first series.
Please remind me how 2016 turned out.
This one is more important, if only for the fact that the Cardinals were a much better team last year than these Tigers are this year. To have lost this series to the Tigers or heaven forfend, to have been swept by the Tigers, would be an awful harbinger of things to come.
It was clear by the end of last year that the Cardinals had slipped significantly from their 2015 and 2016 performances. But we didn’t know that after the opening series last year.
This year’s versions of the Pirates and Cardinals are large question marks. I also don’t think that Milwaukee will be as good this year as last, despite some interesting off-season adds for the same reason that the owners of this blog have stated. Their rotation is horrible and now Jimmy Nelson is going to miss half of the season. Second place in the NL Central is very much up for graps among the Cards, Pirates and Brewers if only because the NL Central is not the strongest division like it was in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Were the Pirates to win 98 games this year they would run away with the NL Central. The Cubs will be lucky to win 92 games, but that will be enough in what is now a very mediocre division.
Well said. I think the first series sweep is significant only in the fact that it didn’t go the other way with the Pirates getting swept. The Tigers are a truly bad team. If the Pirates had gotten swept, it’s negative implications, at least in my mind, would have been worse than any exaggerated enthusiasm arising from the Pirates sweeping a really, really bad team. I predicted 85-77 on another blog I post on regularly, and also that that would not be good enough to make the playoffs. To be honest, I’d be delighted if the Pirates went 81-81 this year. What I do think is that the team is going to way more entertaining than the eternal pessimists think. It’s one thing to say that you think the team is not going to win a lot of games, and quite another to think that the team will be inept in fulfilling that prophecy. They may not have enough talent to make the playoffs, but they will not be inept, bumbling and unwatchable as just a few of the terms I’ve seen bandied about.
Glad we started 4-0 but I looked at batting averages this morning and shook my head. Obviously a very small sample but other than Polanco and Bell it is not good. Some of the guys who hit well in Spring Training (Cervelli and Dickerson) are off to a slow start and some have not hit in either place. Plus the guys who chase pitches (Harrison and Marte) are still doing it in critical situations. They must get better at situational hitting, since we still do not have an abundance of power. Hopefully the pitching stays just good enough to get the job done. I think they will be better than last year.
It’s a 162 game schedule. Any talk that the team that Nutting built can contend is equivalent to hoping for a miracle. Good luck with that.
Someone else pointed out that we started 4-0 in 2016, against better competition, and look how that season turned out. In comparison, Detroit might be the worst team in baseball. Sweeping that series has no significance unless you use it as an indicator that perhaps the Pirates are perhaps better at this point than the worst team in baseball.