A National League scout who watched Pittsburgh get swept by San Francisco thinks the Pirates will be hard-pressed to win 75 games this season. "They don't know how to manufacture runs, they don't know how to move runners, and they don't know how to make their hits count,'' said the scout.
They may also be hard-pressed to win 75 games because they aren't very good.
"Manufacturing" runs is, as all four of us who post on this board know, a meaningless phrase that equates to "giving away outs." "Moving runners" is part of manufacturing runs. And as for "making their hits count," well, I'm not sure how you can make your hits count. It seems like you gets hits or you don't. The Pirates are 27th in the league in OBP, 26th in SLG, and thus 26th in OPS. But there is hope. They are 13th in P/PA, 18th in BB/PA. Not fantastic, but better than you might expect given their record and the fact that they've scored 91 runs this year. This says to me that they've gotten a little unlucky, maybe, at the plate, and that they have underachievers, as evidenced by Jack Wilson's .219 SLG. Yikes.
Their real long-term problem, Mr. Scout, is probably that they are 25th in DEF EFF and don't have any pitching. Not that they don't know how to "make their hits count."
Labels: jerry crasnick, manufacturing runs
