Operation Locked Up: The Pirates Offense has Succumbed to Paralysis by Analysis

5-1-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

The pitcher has got only a ball. I’ve got a bat. So the percentage in weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the fretting. – Hank Aaron

One of my favorite quotes from an all time great hitter, and I’ve always loved it because Aaron was one of the very few who didn’t have to first make sure everyone knew how hard hitting was. He didn’t talk about what the pitchers tried to do, he talked about how he always had the advantage. He was the one with the weapon after all.

It didn’t need to be statistically true. It didn’t need to work in every at bat. It just needed to exist because Hank needed his mindset to be right there in that space. He needed to feel dangerous. Needed to feel that the pitcher’s plan didn’t matter because his was better. He needed to believe deep down in his toes that a pitcher could make one mistake and he wouldn’t need a second.

There are about a billion people out here yelling about a hitting coach being fired, I’ve been one of them and this is why.

We rightly point out that the players own their careers and need to perform despite who their coach is. But the mindset this coaching sets up makes that very difficult.

Think about it, it’s almost entirely focused on the pitcher and what he can do to the hitters, not what the hitter can or should do to the pitcher.

The very idea of trying to make a pitcher throw enough pitches to get out of the game stands in direct opposition to the possibility that you could get him out of the game by hitting what he throws too. It sets the mindset in a defensive posture, again, while the hitter stands there holding the weapon.

It’s a boring brand of baseball for fans. Even when it works. This approach has a ceiling and that ceiling exists almost despite the talent level of the team.

Like, without looking, would you believe this Pirates team is 15th in the league for On Base Percentage at .314? 9th in the National League. They’re getting guys on, certainly enough to be scoring more where they rank 21st in the game.

Thing is, they don’t get that big hit and that should surprise nobody because once they get those guys on base, the reality always comes bubbling to the surface, at some point you have to hit to make it matter.

How many times have you seen the Pirates get runners at 2nd and 3rd with less than one out then watch whoever is hitting draw the easiest walk of his life to load the bases? The next hitter either looks like he’d kill for a walk to drive in a run or he works the count and winds up protecting and hitting a pitchers pitch for a double play or best case scenario a groundout that scores a run.

Where is that Hank Aaron mentality? When does that guy come up who thinks I’ve got this guy right where I want him, he has to throw strikes and when he does, I’m going to rope it.

Who walks to the plate looking like that’s even in their head, let alone front of mind?

I said this at the beginning of the season and it’s still true. If they don’t hit Ben Cherington is going to have to admit one of two things. 1. He and his team have identified talent poorly, these are simply bad hitters. 2. He and his team have adopted an offensive philosophy that produces passivity and it’s destroying his identified talent.

Of course both could be true, both probably are, after all, this wasn’t set up to be a juggernaut even in the most optimistic view, but at the very least, one can be easily changed, the other not so much. Point being, even if the real answer is both, or they’ve damaged the talent so much it won’t rebound with a change, the first scapegoat will be the hitting coach.

At some point.

If you flipped this team’s offensive philosophy on it’s head and applied it to pitching you’d see a guy like Jared Jones trying to paint corners with his 101 MPH fastball. You’d see him throw a slider off the plate when he has that slugger at 3-2 with nobody on. Better to lose the battle and win the war they’d say! Instead, you see him challenge hitters with his best stuff and while it’s led to a few more solo homeruns than you’d like, unlike the offense, he isn’t loading the bases first by being passive on the way there.

If you hit him, you’re hitting what he wanted to throw.

You’d call it nibbling. Probably see him as a head case. Afraid of the zone you’d exclaim.

Well, your mentality at the plate matters too.

Another thing their philosophy does is render many of the analytics they have on pitchers irrelevant.

Hear me out.

You can look at a player like last night’s starter for the A’s Alex Wood, and in every way you can see he gives up a bunch of hits, walks a lot of guys, he’s giving up hard contact regularly and he’s not lasting into games very long. 7 starts now and he has 31.1 innings.

So what does that tell you?

He’s going to get himself out of the game early, he doesn’t need your help. Part of the reason he gets himself out of the game is because he puts a bunch of guys on base and throws a bunch of pitches to do it.

Now your approach is to make him throw a bunch of pitches and get him out of the game early. Two things are working against you if you’re the Pirates. First, he’s a veteran, and it will take him all of an inning to realize these idiots aren’t swinging at anything down in the zone early in counts. Second, if you want to walk 3 times around 3 weak contact or strikeout appearances, he doesn’t care so long as it’s scoreless. In other words, he’ll take what you’re giving him, and he’s savvy enough to know he doesn’t even need to show you his best until he’s got you on the ropes.

That’s one pitcher. Think back through what you’ve watched. How many times have you seen a pitcher like Trevor Williams do the same?

You get guys like this out of the game by the 5th and they’ve walked you 4 times but given up 1 hit, really good chance they exit the game having given their team a chance to win. I’m surprised they don’t cap tip the Pirates dugout as they leave the mound for their last inning. You’re doing them favors by letting them do exactly what they’re capable of. Nibbling with little fear of being hit. Putting guys on base with little fear a big swing is going to put up a crooked number.

The Pirates do better against better pitchers than they do mediocre hurlers if only because they don’t expect the better pitchers to walk them so they tend to be at least a little more prepared to hit.

Thing is, their philosophy is designed specifically to get THOSE pitchers out of the game, not Alex Wood. It doesn’t accomplish it’s stated intent, and I can think of no greater reason to make changes.

They will hit better than they are, there’s more going on here than a philosophy, but with this coaching and this approach they’ll only get so good, and they won’t likely hold it as long as they hold the slumps.

I want hitters stepping into the box thinking they have a bunch of ways to beat the pitcher, but this team is much more concerned with aiming for a certain outcome, that comes about in a certain way. I don’t care what you do in life, if you approach it like that you’ll fail, so color me shocked it’s what we’re watching.

None of this fixes anything, I’m aware of that, but an Alika Williams at bat shouldn’t look the same as a Ke’Bryan Hayes at bat. It’s like entering your Kia and Porsche in a NASCAR race and thinking the way the driver operates the vehicle should produce similar outcomes and just to make sure you’re right, tell the Porsche driver 5th gear is only to be used in a specific situation.

Even if it doesn’t work, I want to see more “A” swings. If they’re going to continue on this path, they need to start preaching contact swings with 2 strikes and their vision of borderline needs to expand.

Fans want to see offense, contact, action and in turn scoring. All I can say is now in the 3rd season of this coaching we’ve seen anything but. If those things aren’t the very core of whatever you’re trying to achieve at the plate, you simply aren’t as smart as you think.

They’re paralyzing their hitters with too many things that aren’t hitting the baseball and in this league, you simply won’t win if you aren’t capable of at least putting balls in play. Every hitter is going to get got, that’s baseball, but not every hitter should be going up there thinking first and foremost that so long as that happens in an 8 pitch at bat they’ve done well.

There are 5 teams that swing at fewer pitches in the strike zone than the Pirates.

In 0-0 counts the Pirates are hitting .308 with 37 hits
In 0-1 counts the Pirates are hitting .297 with 22 hits
In 0-2 counts the Pirates are hitting .125 with 13 hits

Universal truths in baseball, these counts look a lot like this for just about everyone. The success rate falls as the count becomes one sided.

Even if this system works and you get deep into a count though…

In 2-2 counts the Pirates are hitting .185 with 32 hits
In 3-2 counts the Pirates are hitting .179 with 21 hits

Ahead in the count this team hits .294 with an OBP of .508 and an OPS of .963 – 7th in baseball.
Behind in the count this team hits .164 with an OBP of .170 and an OPS of .396 – 28th in baseball.

This isn’t a team that can have deep counts as a goal. Their fall off is simply too great when the count takes a turn. Part of that is the talent of course, but part of it is they have a terrible two strike approach.

Too many things have to go right for this offense to succeed.

The longer this goes on, the harder it becomes to talk about. They don’t change, there is no player who is going to suddenly “do it right” and hit 15 homers in a month. At this point it would take 2 consecutive weeks of hitting and winning to have fans get back to being able to watch the game with both eyes again.