Regardless, I thought I’d take a look at it in a different light. My previous offering was aimed at determining if Pedro would be a solid Major League player. What about the Hall of Fame? Is that a possibility for him? Having to draw a line somewhere, I had a gander (thanks baseball-reference.com) at every Hall of Famer with a career that started (or perhaps peaked) in 1947 or later to see what age they were when they had their first season with an OPS+ of 120.

That was a total of 56 hitters (I excluded pitchers, obviously, and hitters, like Teddy Ballgame, who posted an OPS+ of 120 or greater prior to 1947). Those 56 hitters include three players who never posted a 120 OPS+ – Luis Aparicio, Bill Mazeroski and Ozzie Smith. So, their ages aren’t factored in. The average age of a future Hall of Famer posting their first 120 OPS+ season was 23.9. If you pull out the three players whose MLB debuts were delayed by the color line (Roy Campanella, Monte Irvin and Jackie Robinson), then the age drops to 23.6.

Including middle infielders that didn’t hit for much power was pulling that number upward. Pee Wee Reese’s first 120 OPS+ season was at 28. Nellie Fox had his at 29. Red Schoendienst was 30 and Phil Rizzuto was 32. Clearly our expectation of Pedro is to slug. So, taking it one step more, I pulled out all of the players who failed to club 300 dingers in their career. The average age of the initial 120 OPS+ season of a player that went on to hit 300 or more homers and make the Hall of Fame is 22.5. There were 29 such players. Pedro turned 25 in February of 2012. There were four 300 or more homer hitting, future Hall of Famers who posted their first OPS+ of 120 during their age 25 season – Yogi Berra, Andre Dawson, Tony Perez and Billy Williams.

If I back off the 300 homer requirement and make it 200 homers (moving the sample size to 38 players), then the average age is bumped up to 22.8. At the 200 round tripper threshold, a couple of more players hit their stride at age 25 or later – Roberto Clemente, Kirby Puckett (26 in his first 120 OPS+ campaign) and Brooks Robinson.

Based on my previous post, I still say it is too early for me to call him a bust since I regard the Hall of Fame to be a lofty standard. I don’t think Alvarez will put up Hall of Fame caliber numbers, but I’d be happy if he proved me wrong. Since 1947, only seven of 38 future Hall of Famers who hit 200 or more homers in their career posted their first 120 OPS+ season when they were 25 or older. Time is running out for Pedro to hit that mark.

Hurdle is so damn predictable. After the 6th inning in a close game, attempts a steal every time a guy gets on first.

— Matt Bandi (@MBandi) May 15, 2012

A moment later, I noted that I should actually research what I had just said. So I began sifting through game logs. I picked out any situation in which the Pirates were tied, leading by a run or behind by a run in the seventh inning or later, with a runner at first base only. Here are the results.

I was somewhat surprised to find the Pirates have only attempted to steal in about a third of these situations. It has seemed to happen far more frequently by my recollection. However, when looking a little deeper at each of these situations, the cause of my frustration became a bit more apparent. The first hitter up after the runner reached base put the ball in play within two pitches eight times, eliminating most of the opportunity to steal. On two other occasions, the runner on first was picked off while clearly trying to break toward second. The man at the plate bunted five different times. (That only includes bunts that showed up in the game log. Who knows how many times a hitter tried to bunt and ended up swinging away after falling behind in the count.) In only about 50% of these situations did Clint Hurdle simply sit back and let his hitters swing away. More than a third of those “swing-away” situations may have turned out differently, but the hitter put the ball in play within two pitches.

Sometimes, Hurdle really likes to force the issue. On April 17, Tabata walked, watched as Alex Presley popped out while trying to bunt, and then was thrown out trying to steal. This past Friday, Barajas singled in the eighth inning and was replaced at first by Josh Harrison. Hurdle had Barmes attempt a sac bunt, keeping the bunt on even after the count went to two strikes. Immediately after Barmes narrowly avoided fouling out on the bunt attempt, Harrison was picked off while trying to steal second.

It is pretty clear that with a guy on first base late in a close game, Hurdle is going to try to force that runner to second base. It could be a sacrifice bunt attempt, or it could be an attempted steal. Regardless, opposing teams can be confident that the Pirates are usually going to try something when someone reaches first base. That predictable nature may just have something to do with the team’s awful success rate on stolen base attempts.

In the ninth inning tonight, Presley walked with two outs. I half-jokingly tweeted that there was an 80% chance he would try to steal. Two pitches later, Presley broke for second and was thrown out.

Note: I counted up these numbers by manually going through game logs, so it is possible that I missed something here or there. You can see the rough notes that I kept here, if you’re interested.

The hope is that the guys who have struggled will return to their normal level of play and the few who have played well will bring it up a couple notches. Is that realistic? Does that actually happen? The short answer is no. It has rarely happened in recent history and the talent level on this club doesn’t give me much hope of it happening for the 2012 Buccos. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

I did some simple ciphering. I looked at the April runs per game data for every MLB team going back to 2007 (data from mlb.com) and took the bottom five teams. Then I looked at the final data at baseball-reference.com for each of those seasons. I had a couple of questions.

1. How often do teams who struggle in the early going actually put it together to wind up with a better than average offense? The answer is just once over the past five seasons. The 2008 Twins came out of the gate with the 26th best offense in Show through April. But they finished fourth when the dust settled. How did they do it? They got great production from both Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer. Denard Span emerged (he wasn’t a regular in April). They wound up hitting .305 with runners in scoring position as a team for the whole season, a mark that lead the Majors. No team has been above .300 with RISP since.

2. How many games do teams in this predicament wind up winning? Which teams, if any, finished above .500? Which teams, if any, made the playoffs? The 25 teams posted an average of 73 wins over the course of the season. Teams that were above the break even mark were the 2011 Giants, the 2009 Braves, the 2009 Giants and the 2008 Twins. None of these teams made the playoffs. We already talked about the Twins season in 2008. What about the Giants and Braves. San Fran and Atlanta finished at #2 and #3 in the Big Leagues in ERA in 2009. The Giants were #2 again last year. The offense didn’t propel them over .500. The success of those clubs belonged mainly to the hurlers.

So, can the Pirates break out and surprise people over the final 80% of the season? Call me a cynic, but I wouldn’t bet on it. To do it they need one (or hopefully more) of the following three things to happen:

1. Don’t waste any base runners and lead the league in batting average with RISP

2. Have a dominant pitching staff (currently 3rd in the Majors in ERA – please keep it up!)

3. Have someone unexpectedly begin producing – a minor leaguer comes up and mashes or a Big Leaguer plays above his head for the rest of the year

Here is the raw data for anyone who is interested. I list the team, the spot in runs per game in the Majors after April, the same stat but for the whole season and finally how many games they won that year.

2011

San Francisco – 26th, 29th, 86 wins

Pittsburgh – 27th, 27th, 72 wins

Oakland – 28th, 21st, 74 wins

Minnesota – 29th, 25th, 63 wins

San Diego – 30th, 28th, 71 wins

2010

Seattle – 26th, 30th, 61 wins

Pittsburgh – 27th, 29th, 57 wins

Cleveland – 28th, 26th, 69 wins

Baltimore – 29th, 27th, 66 wins

Houston – 30th, 28th, 76 wins

2009

Atlanta – 26th, 17th, 86 wins

San Francisco – 27th, 26th, 88 wins

Arizona – 28th, 20th, 70 wins

Cincinnati – 29th, 24th, 78 wins

Houston – 30th, 27th, 74 wins

2008

Minnesota – 26th, 4th, 88 wins

Kansas City – 27th, 25th, 75 wins

Washington – 28th, 28th, 59 wins

San Francisco – 29th, 29th, 72 wins

San Diego – 30th, 30th, 63 wins

2007

Kansas City – 26th, 27th, 69 wins

Oakland – 27th, 19th, 76 wins

Pittsburgh – 28th, 23rd, 68 wins

St. Louis – 29th, 22nd, 78 wins

Washington – 30th, 30th, 73 wins

I was wondering what kind of hitter fails to hit .150 in a month? Are they catchers? Do they continue to get regular playing time? Do they rebound to post a decent season if given the chance? So, I ran the data at mlb.com for 2011. I pulled in every instance in which a player had at least 50 plate appearances in a given month. Here is what I found.

There were 1660 total player months in which a player got at least 50 plate appearances. 428 different players were involved.

There were 29 instances of a player hitting less than .150 in a month in which they got 50 plate appearances. 26 different players were involved (Adam Dunn did it three times and Paul Janish did it twice). 1.7% (29/1660) of all player months with at least 50 plate appearances resulted in a batting average of .150 or less. 6.1% (26/428) of all players who got 50 plate appearances in a month hit less than .150 in one of those month.

Notable players involved include Brian McCann (actually started the All-Star game before stumbling in August), Jorge Posada, Chris Young, Adam LaRoche, Casey McGehee, Grady Sizemore and David DeJesus.

Of the 26 different players who accomplished the feat, eight of them were backstops. Final batting averages for the season ranged from .119 (Dan Johnson) to .273 (Yorvit Torrealba). Nine of the 26 players rebounded to hit at least .225 on the season. 13 of the players failed to hit .200 on the season. Offending players averaged a total of 290 at bats on the year. Four players wound up getting enough at bats to qualify for the batting title (which they obviously didn’t win) – DeJesus, McCann, McGehee and Young. Dunn just missed.

Only one team in 2011 had two players hit less than .150 in the same month. The Rays had the aforementioned Johnson and catcher Kelly Shoppach both hit less than .150 in April of 2011.

Based on data from 2011, it happens most often to catchers. Most of them wind up being part time players. Getting over the Mendoza line proves to be difficult. None of this makes me feel any better. But it does satisfy some curiosity.

Six of the nine everyday players (including both Jones and Casey McGehee as everyday players) have hit worse than projected. Four of those players are producing at a clip at least 50 points short of their projection, with Rod Barajas pulling up the rear with a wOBA 150 points lower than was projected. Those are the ingredients of a pretty feeble team offense.

The good news is that these struggles are unlikely to last all season. It generally takes about a season’s worth of plate appearances for wOBA to stabilize, so we are still right in the thick of random variation. It is very likely that most of these players will move closer to their original projections over the remainder of the season, which means better times could be coming for the team’s offense.

Of course, that is not a guarantee. Many of these players are decent candidates to miss their projections dramatically. Barajas and Clint Barmes are both around the age where a sudden and steep drop-off in performance would not be unheard of. Alex Presley entered the season with only 256 career plate appearances in the big leagues, which makes him very difficult to project. Neil Walker and Jose Tabata have relatively limited track records as well.

All in all, the Pirates offense is likely to improve to some degree. The unknown is exactly how much it will improve.

Note: These stats were current entering tonight’s game. In fact, as I was writing that second paragraph, Barajas hit his walk-off home run.

I had to watch Alex Presley square around to bunt in the first inning right after Jose Tabata was plunked leading off the game. Why not see if Latos is going to be wild before trying to bunt the runner over? He just hit a guy. take a couple of pitches and see what happens. Turns out, he was wild as he walked the next two men. Todd Frazier made a nice play on Casey McGehee and Nate McLouth started the whiff festivities by taking strike three to end the inning. Pittsburgh would only advance one more runner past second base all game.

So how bad is it for a team to strike out 17 times in a game? On the drive back home I was thinking it was catastrophic: only really bad teams whiff that often and those that do are doomed to finish well below .500. So how bad is it?

I searched baseball-reference.com for all incidences of a 16 whiff (16 instead of 17 to get a few more points of data) or more performance by a team in a nine inning game. Over the last five full seasons (2007-2011), it has happened 46 times. Here are some stats:

1. 15% of all the teams that suffered a 16 strikeout game went on to make the playoffs – seven out of 46.

2. 41% of all such teams finished with a mark of .500 or better.

3. The average number of wins (factoring out teams that were victimized multiple times in the same year – like the 2011 Mariners whom I counted once in spite of three such contests) for a team that suffered the indignity of 16 or more Ks was 79.

4. The starting pitchers involved in fanning so many playoff bound hitters ranged from the studly (Cliff Lee, Jake Peavy) to the the up and coming talents (Josh Johnson, Scott Kazmir – up and coming when he was a part of it, Brandon Morrow) to the journeymen (Byung-Hyun Kim, Vicente Padilla).

Mr. Obvious would tell you that striking out so often isn’t a good thing by any means. But it isn’t quite as bad as I figured it was.

Other final thoughts on my weekend in Pittsburgh. I was disappointed that batting practice ended so early on Sunday. We got there as the park was opening and it was over about 10 minutes later.

With Ken the Lemonade guy no longer with us – we looked forward to seeing him every year – my new favorite vendor is a guy who sells water at the base on the Clemente bridge closest to PNC. He simply bellows ‘watta one dolla watta one dolla watta one dolla’ over and over and over again.

The shirts they were giving away as part of the Clemente ticket package were more than a bit effeminate. Not sure why they went with a v neck. Do they think that Pittsburgh is populated by a bunch of Daniel Tosh disciples? No way could I pull of a v neck t-shirt. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an even larger number than normal of those find their way onto ebay.

I was happy that Clint Barmes was pinch hit for his last time up on Sunday. After he was booed twice by the home fans, my son said remarked, ‘I feel bad for him.’ In a way, I did too. He looked awful at the plate both Saturday (two weak grounders and two whiffs) and Sunday (three whiffs for five straight strike outs). Watching Barmes was like watching Mike Benjamin.

I’ve been coming over every year since 2001 to see a Saturday night game followed by a Sunday afternoon game. I have not one single time witness the Pirates win both contests. My brother called the Sunday game after the third inning was over with Pittsburgh trailing 4-0. He simply said, ‘No way this lineup scores five runs’. He was right.

Stopped by the Tanger outlet just north of Washington on the trip in. It was a typical outlet village. There was a pretty solid crowd, which is nice.

The pizza at Giovanni’s is tough to beat. Two slices of pepperoni for $5. It is part of the annual trek over here. I’m always happy to partake of a Big Gulp from the 7-11 on the corner of 6th street.

PNC Park has held up very well. It still looks great and still has a very comfortable feel and atmosphere. The occasional updates that have been made are solid. Kudos to the stadium operations team.

A negative mark for the merchandising department. A continued negative mark. I complain every year about the poor choices that are available in the gift shop at the park. I can buy a Michael McKenry jersey t-shirt if I want to (or one for Clint Hurdle). And then I could drive home and stick it in a drawer along with my Pokey Reese and Sean Casey jersey t-shirts. Kidding as I didn’t buy a Reese or a Casey. And I won’t be buying a McKenry. Nothing against the Fort – I’d prefer him behind the plate most nights instead of Rod Barajas. But how can the merchandising department justify a McKenry jersey t-shirt? They can’t. They apparently don’t have any ideas because if they did, they would certainly have a better selection. Here’s  one: how about a Dave Parker jersey t-shirt? Here’s another: how about an Andy Van Slyke jersey t-shirt. Want one more? How about one for Al Oliver?  The only shirt I’m going to buy is one that reads ‘We Are Family’. But it was made by Nike and the Pirates marketing team almost certainly had nothing to do with it. A couple of years ago, the shirt selection was so poor that the only thing I took home was the free long sleeve t-shirt that was available when I signed up for a credit card. I’m a sucker for Pirates stuff and more than happy to spend my money. Yet, year after year I find myself scratching my head and taking much of my money back home with me.

The lack of a jersey t-shirt isn’t the only instance of Dave Parker being slapped across the face by the organization. The background on the big scoreboard for the visiting players is a collage featuring images of people from the visiting city. In this case, the Reds are in town. They have pictures of various celebs from the Cincy area (or those who are associated with the Cincy area since Oscar Robertson, whose picture is part of the collage, is from Indy but played for UC and the Cincinnati Royals in the NBA). This group of celebs shown includes Carmen Electra, Barry Larkin, Kent Tekulve, Don Zimmer, George Clooney, his aunt Rosemary, Marge Schott,  and Roy Rogers. Dave Parker is a near Hall of Famer. He grew up in Cincinnati. Graduated from high school in Cincinnati. He played for the Pirates. He played for the Reds. But somehow his picture isn’t included as part of the background for the visiting players? It makes no sense. Either the people in charge are doing it deliberately or they just aren’t thinking. Either scenario isn’t good.

I miss the ‘It’s time to Shoot Some Hot Dogs’ jingle. It was replaced by a knock-off of ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ by a knock-off cast of ‘Glee’. Not nearly as cool.

James McDonald was tough again. He whiffed two hitters in each of the first three innings. I like Mike Leake a lot. He doesn’t throw hard. But he works quick and has an idea of what to do. His only mistake was the gopher ball he served up to Neil Walker.

There was a scuffle among fans down the right field line. I was too far away to see what was going on. But it appeared that at least one person was being booted from the game. I’m going to go out on a limb and say alcohol played a factor. Nothing like coming to a game and getting drunk on $8 beers.

Jose Tabata’s running catch to end the top of the sixth was amazing. From my seats in section 112 up the first base bag, I had no idea he caught it for a few moments. It was also funny to watch a blooper from Joey Votto fall in fair territory down the left field line and then bounce into the stands for a double. Only Votto didn’t know it. He thought it was going to slice foul. He stayed by the plate and turned his back on the ball. Oops.

Clint Barmes and Barajas both came up with big plays in the field. Barmes looked awful at the plate. He came up in the bottom of the eighth with the bases loaded and two outs. He swung and missed at ball four on a 3-2 count when a walk would’ve forced home an insurance run. When he came up, I told my brother that Hurdle would almost be better off having Alex Presley purposefully bat out of turn (skipping both Barmes and Barajas) in the hopes that Dusty Baker wouldn’t catch it. Either way, the Pirates were giving away an out.

After Barmes whiffed to end the eighth, my brother said, ‘Can’t they get someone else to play short? I mean, I think Mike Benjamin is available.’ Ouch.

I also don’t like the entrance production for Joel Hanrahan. As my son noted, it’s like MLB has stolen directly from the WWE when it comes to entrance music and video. It is overdone and over the top. The grand entrance production would make sense if John Cena was coming to the plate to face him.

My nominee for fan of the game is the guy wearing the Lastings Milledge replica jersey in the concourse near section 108.

Good crowd tonight. It was fireworks night. Good show as we walked back to the Renaissance across the Warhol bridge since the Clemente Bridge was shut down.

The starting pitchers for the Pirates have posted awful K/9 ratios over the last several years. Here are the actual numbers (for Pirate starters collectively) and the MLB average (for starters) along with NL rank and overall MLB rank for the Buccos:

2011 – 5.6 for Pittsburgh versus 6.8 in all of baseball. That was good for last in the NL and last in the Majors (best was James McDonald with 7.5 whiffs per nine innings)

2010 – 5.6/6.8 for 16th/29th (McDonald registered 8.6 in eleven starts. Next best was Charlie Morton with 6.7 in 17 starts)

2009 – 5.2/6.7 for 15th/29th (Kevin Hart was 6.6 in ten starts. Morton made 18 starts and was 5.8)

2008 – 5.6/6.5 for 15th/25th (Snell was best with 7.4)

2007 – 5.8/6.3 for 13th/22nd (Snell was at 7.7)

2006 – 6.1/6.2 for 11th/17th (Snell at 8.2)

2005 – 5.9/6.0 for 12th/19th (Perez came in at 8.5 despite a terrible year)

2004 – 6.8/6.2 for 5th/6th (Perez with 11.0 per nine innings!)

2003 – 5.6/6.1 for 12th/19th (Kip Wells was best on the club with 6.7 K/9)

2002 – 5.1/6.2 for 15th/28th (Wells with 6.1 was tops on the team)

So other than the big year Perez had in 2004, the Pirates have been very, very bad. Other than 2004, they failed to finish in the top half of the league or all of the Majors in K/9 since 2002. There were also a couple of seasons when the Pirates top strikeout artist wasn’t even league average. Ugh.

Over at baseball-reference.com, I looked at pitchers with the most wins for the ten-year span of 2002 to 2011. There were 30 pitchers who have notched 100 Ws in that time frame. Starting pitchers in that ten-year window averaged 6.4 whiffs per nine innings. So, how many of those 30 pitchers to pick up 100 wins had better than 6.4 K/9? 21 out of 30 were better than league average in their strikeout rate. The nine big winning soft tossers are:

Tim Wakefield – 106 wins and 5.97 K/9

Bronson Arroyo – 105/5.97

Brad Penny – 101/5.91

Derek Lowe – 146/5.71

Tim Hudson – 132/5.68

Jamie Moyer – 116/5.33

Livan Hernandez – 117/5.28

Mark Buehrle – 141/5.03

Jon Garland – 122/4.84

Looking at a more recent set of years, the five years from 2007 to 2011 saw the average starter fan 6.6 batters per nine innings. In that same window, 46 pitchers picked up 50 or more wins. Ten of those 46 failed to average 6.6 whiffs in nine innings or better. So, here’s to more and more whiffs. They are long overdue.

An 0-2 pitch appeared to catch the bottom of the strike zone, but Campos called it a ball. That set off Barajas, who took a similar pitch for a called strike in the top of the inning. “If our guy throws the ball in the same spot. you expect a strike to be called,” Barajas said. “The pitch I got that I thought was down, he called a strike. The pitch that A.J. threw, I felt it was a strike and he called it a ball. It was a big spot in the game. We were trying to get back on track. To lose out on that (call), it makes it hard and frustrating for me.”

Here are the pitches to Barajas in the top of the second, courtesy of Brooks Baseball. Remember that these are from the catcher’s point of view. The black square is the estimated rule book strike zone. I also added the red square, which represents the typical strike zone for a right-handed batter of Barajas’ height, based on research by Mike Fast. (Note: Click on any image to enlarge.)

Pitch two was the one that angered Barajas. As you can see, it was well below the typically called strike zone. This was a bad call. Now let’s take a look at the pitch to Beltran that led to the ejections. Again, I added the typical strike zone for a lefty of Beltran’s height.

The pitch in question is number three. This call was far more defensible, as it appears to be a bit below the typical strike zone. It is understandable that Barajas would be frustrated, though. This pitch was pretty significantly higher than the one he took for a strike in the previous half inning.

Now let’s look at the strike zone over the course of the entire game. These are broken down by left-handed and right-handed batters, and already include Fast’s estimates of the strike zones. Keep in mind the bottom and top limits of the zones are only estimates, and would fluctuate in reality depending on the hitter’s height. The labels in the legend indicate the team that was pitching. Green points were called balls, while red points were called strikes.

Based on these images, I think the Pirates have the right to be upset by about four calls. There is the strike call against Barajas, which is the lowest red point on the right-handed hitter chart. On the left-handed hitter chart, there is another lone red point well below the strike zone, indicating a strike called against the Pirates. Also, on the outside corner of the left-handed zone, there were two pitches that were called balls to Cardinals hitters, despite being in an area that was being called a strike for most of the game. You could make an argument that some pitches on the outside corner against righties should have been strikes, but it does not seem that Campos was giving either team that corner. So, at least he was being consistent there. There is also a pitch on the inside corner against a left-handed Cardinal hitter that was probably improperly called a ball. However, there are no other pitches in the vicinity, so it is unclear whether that was any type of inconsistency.

All in all, the Pirates clearly were slighted on a few calls over the course of the game. Whether that demands a formal complaint is debatable, although Dejan Kovacevic makes a good point here. If the team quietly accepts any unfair treatment, that unfair treatment is likely to just continue.

To be clear, “No. 1 starter” is a scouting/industry term, not a slot in the rotation. There were plenty of No. 3 starters taking the bump on opening day. There are maybe ten No. 1 starters in baseball. These are the guys who enter your head every time it comes time to predict who will win the Cy Young award each year. It takes stuff and command, but also durability, consistency, and that extra something else.

Be sure to give it a read.