The Pirates Offense...It's Not That Bad

In six games from May 28th to June 3rd the Pirates scored 22 runs, averaging 3.67 runs a game.  Granted, that may not sound like much, but lets compare that to other stretches so far this season.  Throughout, April the Pirates offense was record breaking bad.  The club was last in almost every major offense category, except homeruns.  In fact, in a similar six game span from April 16th to April 22nd, the Bucs only scored 12 runs, averaging 2 runs a game. Why the dramatic change?

A lot of people may be thinking this is due to less challenging pitching, but that cannot account for the dramatic change.  For example, the Reds are 7th in the MLB in pitching and when we played them in early May we only scored 4 runs over a three game series.  While in the first two games of this series the Bucs have scored 12 runs and counting.  So pitching challenge may account for part of the change, but I think there is still more to this story.

The difference between then and now has been offensive production from younger players.  Even though most of them do not have the numbers we would hope, there has been a considerable increase in performance.  Take Hague as an example, at the end of April he had a terrible average of .111, but since then he has increased it to .229, a considerable change.  Garrett Jones, even though he is not a young guy, is also contributing greatly to the teams recent success.  He is batting .313 in June so far and is on pace to hit around 20 homers this season.  Jones has also been helped by McCutchen who has been a constant throughout the season, and his stats show this as well.  He leads the team in every major offensive stat, an unprecedented accomplishment.

Overall I would expect this uptick in offense to continue and the Pirates pitching to subdue a little as it has recently. But, if nothing else, it makes the games more exciting to go to when you get to see so much young talent performing well.  The future of the Pirates offense may not be as bleak as had been predicted, in-fact I think the best is still to come.