Pittsburgh Pirates: Do the Bucs Really Need to Add a Bat?
By Matt Shetler
As the trade deadline rapidly approaches, there have been a ton of rumors surrounding the Pittsburgh Pirates. Names like Justin Upton, Carlos Quentin, Shane Victorino and more have been linked to the Pirates at one time or another over the past couple of weeks.
That begs the question of if the Bucs really need to add a bat at all to contend in the National League Central?
It would be nice to have, but I don’t think the Pirates NEED to add offense. I’d much rather see them add a quality arm for the stretch run.
Pirates’ general manager Neal Huntington is in a tough spot trying to figure out exactly what type of team the Pirates are. Are they the team that couldn’t hit a lick through the season’s first two months and were carried by excellent pitching? Or are they the team that has had one of the best offenses in Major League Baseball since the beginning of June.
The common opinion is that the Pirates need to add power, but they really don’t.
Through two months, the Pirates were last in the majors in batting average, runs scored, home runs, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and many other offensive categories.
I’ve always said the Pirates offense wasn’t as bad as they performed early on and that has been the case lately.
Since we are focusing on power in this instance, the Bucs have hit 101 homers to date. That’s the third best mark in the National League. In addition, they’ve hit 64 homers on the road this season. That ties them with the New York Yankees for the most road home runs in all of baseball.
Yes, those New York Yankees.
The Bucs hit .268 as a team in the month of June, good for seventh in all of baseball and have the second best team batting average in July at .299.
They’ve scored more runs than any team in baseball this month and throughout June and July combined the Pirates rank in the top six in baseball in the following categories: hits, runs, batting average, extra-base hits, OBP, slugging percentage, OPS, home runs and RBI.
That’s just as big of a sample size as the early months when everyone was ready to call the Bucs the worst offense in MLB history.
This offense is capable of scoring plenty of enough runs to win. I just don’t know how much adding one bat will impact this team down the stretch.
Of course if Huntington can get one at a cheap price then pull the trigger, but I am not on board with parting with a major piece or two of the franchise’s future for a bat that won’t have a huge impact on an offense that is already performing as one of the league’s best.
The problem going forward for the Pirates won’t be the offense. The main concern is the starting pitching.
Asking James McDonald and A.J. Burnett to duplicate their first half performances is asking a lot and we’ve already seen McDonald have a couple shaky outings to begin the second half of the season. After that, putting the fate of a playoff push on the arms of Jeff Karstens, Erik Bedard and Kevin Correia is a very risky proposition.
Adding a horse at the top of the rotation, not saying there’s a deal to be had right now, will impact the Pirates club much more during the final two months of the season.
Huntington could make a move or two to improve the bench and I wouldn’t be upset right now if he pulled the trigger on a deal that brought in an Upton-type of player. But that’s not the glaring weakness on this team right now and parting with key pieces of the future could prove fatal a couple of years down the road.