Pittsburgh Pirates: Bucs’ Bats Still Sleeping Through First Week of Season
By Matt Shetler
We all knew that it could be a struggle this season for the Pittsburgh Pirates offense, but what we didn’t know is that they left their bats in Bradenton when the team traveled north.
It’s been a rough early go for the Bucs, scoring only nine runs as a team through five games (five coming in one game), hitting a collective .189 on the young season.
They’ve managed only 30 hits in 46 innings of baseball, which includes only nine extra-base hits (six doubles, one triple and two home runs). The Bucs have an OBP of a lowly .228 and an OPS of only .504.
Good thing there are 157 games left to get things turned around.
Pirates manager Clint Hurdle has played all of the right matchups, sitting Garrett Jones and Pedro Alvarez against southpaws, but nothing has worked out to date.
Only Casey McGehee (.33 AVG), Alex Presley (.333) and Andrew McCutchen (.316) have shown any life at the plate so far. The rest of the team is struggling big time.
Jones 2-for-11 (.182)
Alvarez 1-for-9 (.111)
Jose Tabata 3-for-18 (.167)
Neil Walker 1-for-17 (.059)
Rod Barajas 1-for-13 (.077)
Clint Barmes 1-for-15 (.067)
The Bucs must get some production from some of these guys and preferably soon. The team leaders in RBI are you leadoff man in Presley and bench player Matt Hague with two apiece.
Certainly its way too early to panic, but it hurts to waste solid starting pitching efforts like the Bucs have received in their first five games. The combination of Erik Bedard (twice), Jeff Karstens, Kevin Correia and James McDonald have combined to allow only seven earned runs in five starts, with a combined ERA of 2.10.
Of course the likes of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Vance Worley, Clayton Kershaw and Chad Billingsly certainly had something to say about how the Pirates offense has performed to start the season, but you have to find a way to score runs, even against good starting pitching.
The Pirates bats won’t be down for the entire season. Some of these guys hopefully will start to come around beginning tonight in Los Angeles.
It’s very tough though, because the starters have given the Bucs a chance to win all five games and a hit here or a hit there might have got that done.
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