Measurements of How Bad the Offense is, Part 3: Slugging Percentage

Posted by on May 26, 2012 | 1 Comment

Going into Saturday action against the Wriglies, the Pirates have the 15th ranked slugging percentage in the National League (thank you San Diego). That’s just the raw data. They actually have the lowest OPS+ in baseball.  The current slugging percentage of .343 is:

1. On track to be worse than the 1985 team that featured Sixto Lezcano and Steve Kemp and George Hendrick and a badly fading Jason Thompson in prominent roles

2. On track to be the worst team slugging percentage since 1968 (also at .343), the Year of the Pitcher, when the Pirates were one of only three clubs in the Majors to post a team batting average of .250 or higher. Right after that the mound was lowered and four teams were added and offense bounced back.

3. Only slightly better than the 1952 Rickey Dinks team that posted a .331 slugging percentage and lost 112 games. The 1952 mark is the worst in the last 60 years of Pirate baseball

4. Among the 25 lowest slugging percentages going back to the divisional play era (1969) to present. The lowest in that time frame belongs to the 1972 Expos at .325.

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  • JohnDreker

    The Padres have also played 28 of their games at home, where they average 2.89 runs per game, as opposed to 19 games on the road where they average just over 3.50. I’m pretty sure we could find many ways to say just how bad the team is this year. I like the useless stat I looked up last night at posted on twitter. Jake Stenzel set the team record with 150 runs scored in 525 AB’s in 1894. This Pirates team has 127 runs scored in 1450 AB’s this year. As a team, they wouldn’t even place in the Pirates top 10 yet among individual players single season runs scored.

    As hard as it is to believe about a team three games under .500 still early in the year, they are lucky to be 21-24 at this point. If the pitching starts to pitch even league average(or worse) the Pirates are in for a rough summer