Why Do The Pirates Refuse To Throw Runners Out?

If you have watched the Pirates at all this year you would of probably noticed their inability to throw out runners attempting to steal bases. I myself have noticed this as well so I looked a little farther into and I really had no idea how bad it actually was. When your a team like the Pirates who is 29th in the league in batting average and other important batting stat's you can not afford to give the team the extra base which the Pirates are doing seemingly every time someone gets on-base.

Rod Barajas who has played just about 2/3 of the total innings for the Pirates this year has had a total of 42 chances to throw out runners attempting to steal and has actually throw these runners out just two times. If your going to do the math that is just .048% of the time, and if you want to do more math that means Barajas  throws runners out less then one out of every twenty times he has the chance. This is by far the worst in the league the next worst being Jarrod Saltalamacchia of the Red Sox who has still thrown out more then three times the runners at seven then Barajas has.

The second and third worst regular starters in the major leagues at throwing out base runners are Buster Posey and Saltalamacchia. The difference between Barajas compared to Posey and Saltalamacchia is that the other two make up for their lack of defense on offense. Barajas is hitting at just a .224/.284/.394 compared to Posey's .298/.361/.483 and Saltalamacchia's .254/.301/.539.  Both of these players have better stats then Barajas in virtually every offensive category making you ask yourself what Barajas actually has on these guys.

As a lot of people like to say, the stolen base is not always on the catcher which is true but a lot of the time it is. Michael McKenry who has played the other third of the innings for th e Pirates has a .166% at throwing out base-runners proves this point. I'm not going to go as far as to say that McKenry is good at throwing out base-runners but he is a whole of a lot better then Barajas. Rod Barajas rSB which measures the runs a catcher or pitcher saves on stolen bases is at a -5. This means that Barajas actually loses his team runs when he is in the field playing catcher. Mckenry's rSB is at an even 0 which means that he doesn't necessarily help his team on stolen bases but he doesn't hurt his team any. Right now with Barajas being day-to-day McKenry has a chance to earn himself maybe not a starting job but certainly more playing time that is if he hits, because that is basically the reason he's not playing right now.

The Pirates pitchers do also play a big role in the lack of runners the Pirates throw out stealing. Out of the fifteen players to pitch for the Pirates so far this year none of them have a positive rSB, but two of them do have a negative rSB. The two guys that have negative rSB are A.J. Burnett and Jared Hughes at -3 and -5. The pitchers need to help their catchers out because if they don't give the catchers a chance then everyone will be able to steal on this team.

Like I mentioned earlier the Pirates are not exactly hitting the cover off of the ball so they have to make up for this with good pitching and defense. Throwing out base runners is not exactly defense but it is pretty close. It seems like every time someone even walks it turns into a double which is something that is just flat out unacceptable, you can not easily allow runners to run their way into scoring position. It will be interesting to see how or if the Pirates improve at all in this category the rest of the season, because if they want to stay in this race for the playoffs I think they have to.