The plate discipline of the 2012 Pirates is nothing short of horrifying. However, this is not a new thing. Almost every Pirate has had their plate discipline get progressively worse each year. Before I delve into the numbers, here is a short explanation of the metrics I will be using. All data is courtesy of Fangraphs, as always. And I used only the Pirates most often started players this season, in an effort to save me work while still getting the most important players.

O-Swing%: The percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the strike zone.
Z-Swing%: The percentage of pitches a batter swings at inside the strike zone.
Swing%: The overall percentage of pitches a batter swings at.
O-Contact%: The percentage of pitches a batter makes contact with outside the strike zone when swinging the bat.
Z-Contact%: The percentage of pitches a batter makes contact with inside the strike zone when swinging the bat.
Contact%: The overall percentage of a batter makes contact with when swinging the bat.
Zone%: The overall percentage of pitches a batter sees inside the strike zone.
F-Strike% – The percentage of first pitch strikes.
SwStr%: The percentage of total pitches a batter swings and misses on.

And here are the league averages from 2002-2011 in those categories.

And now on to the numbers. Here are the numbers for Garrett Jones, Pedro Alvarez, Andrew McCutchen, Neil Walker, and Alex Presley.

Jones

Alvarez

McCutchen

Walker

Presley

There are more than a few troubling trends in this data. For starters, every player has seen their O-Swing% increase from year to year. Only Presley is at or below the average in that category. McCutchen is normally below the average, but this season even he is above 30%. Everyone in this group except for Walker is swinging more in the zone as well (Walker is swinging at more out of the zone, and less in the zone, which is troubling in itself). In most cases (not Walker, who is making more contact on worse pitches) players' overall contact rates have gone down, and swinging strike rates have gone up, which is understandable since they're swinging at more pitches out of the zone, where they are less likely to hit the ball. Something that is very interesting, however, is that aside from against McCutchen, opposing teams seem to have caught on to these trends. Every player on this list other than Cutch is seeing a career low percentage of pitches in the zone. And we're still swinging more than ever. That is not a good combination.

Now, on to the one player who doesn't have this steady trend

Tabata

In a startling trend for Pirates players, Tabata swung a lot less last year. That resulted in a much better walk rate. He also had a higher strikeout rate, but it was an overall positive increase in BB/K ratio. Additionally, his contact rates improved when he was more selective at the plate. However, this year he is back to free swinging, and fits right in with the above Pirates setting career highs in swinging, and swinging outside of the zone.

Now, let's look at the Pirate free agent additions from this offseason (the last four years of their careers, not all of it),

Barmes

Barajas

Two players not exactly known for their plate discipline, even veterans Barmes and Barajas are swinging at career highs. What semblance of plate discipline they had has eroded this season.

So, Pirate hitters suck. Big whoop, wanna fight about it? Yes, the players may be bad, but I find it highly unlikely that the vast majority of players that get significant playing time on the Pirates have their plate discipline erode on their own. Young players, established veterans, everyone is swinging more. In the zone, out of the zone, doesn't matter. Everyone is swinging. And somebody has to be telling them to do that. Or at least not telling them to stop it. I don't know if that would be Greg Ritchie, or Clint Hurdle, or who, but someone needs to get Pirate hitters to swing less. Considering how veteran hitters have increased their swing rates when coming to Pittsburgh, I would say it seems as though somebody is advocating this free swinging strategy. The Pirates may be setting career highs in terrible plate discipline this season, but the trends are not new. For a few years now, players have been swinging more, and at worse pitches. Anyone with eyes can watch the Pirates and see that they need to be more selective at they plate. But yet, they aren't doing that, and it's something that's been happening for a while. These players need to learn some modicum of plate discipline. Whoever is telling them to swing needs to go away, and someone needs to teach the Pirates to not swing at every pitch they see.

The league has adjusted to the Pirates. The team swings at everything outside of the zone, so other teams have quit throwing it in the zone as much. Now the Pirates need to adjust back.

Well, either that or they're just cursed, terrible, or both.

With the trade deadline looming, much speculation has gone on regarding potential moves for the Pirates. One oft mentioned name is the seemingly beloved Hunter Pence. I will be comparing Pence to Jose Tabata, as it has been brought up that it may take Tabata to bring Pence to Pittsburgh. I would also mention Garrett Jones and Alex Presley in the other corner outfield slot, but since Presley's play of late has muddled that situation, and the sample size is far too small to evaluate him, I will stick with Tabata. One thing to bear in mind is that Pence is under control through 2013, while Tabata is under control through 2016. Another factor is Tabata's age, which at 22 makes him a more likely candidate for future improvement. Another (seemingly obvious) factor is how much Pence will cost, which appears to be substantial to say the least. But enough of that, let's get to the fun and look at the numbers.

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I always hear things like "the Pirates need more power", and "this offense won't score without a middle of the lineup home run hitter", and there are several problems with that. First of all, power != home runs. Obviously home runs help power, but to be a power hitter you don't need to be a home run hitter. As a quick example of this I looked at the isolated power leaderboard from last season. And there was Andres Torres sitting with good power numbers, despite having only 16 home runs. Which put him above players like Prince Fielder and his 32 home runs. I think this is a fairly obvious assessment, so I don't feel a need to delve any deeper into it.

A second problem is that I don't believe power is a must for offensive performance. I believe that runs are runs, and if you get on base, you will score. So I decided to take a look at the data.

I took a look at the years 2008-2011, and looked at the correlation between runs scored and home runs, runs scored and isolated power, and as a point of comparison, runs scored and on base percentage.

First, I will look at the relationship between runs scored and home runs. I did the graphs in OpenOffice, so I don't know how to get them in here, but it isn't all that important. The correlation coefficients broke down as follows.

2008: 0.38

2009: 0.55

2010: 0.53

2011: 0.62

Oddly enough, the correlation of every stat I looked at increased yearly. That could be do to many things I'm not even going to try to get into right now. The point is, the average correlation is around .5, which is a statistically significant correlation, but not a very strong one. The graphs of all of these (that I can't show you) are quite scattered, but they show that home runs certainly help an offense, obviously.

Now, for the relationship between runs scored and isolated power. The correlation coefficients:

2008: 0.49

2009: 0.57

2010: 0.59

2011: 0.71

The average correlation here is around 0.58 (I'm just guessing here), which makes overall power a stronger correlation to scoring runs than home runs, but it still isn't a very strong correlation. These graphs appear significantly less scattered, with a few outliers throwing off the correlation rather than a more spread out graph like home runs. So power is helpful, and moreso than just home runs.

Now, as a bit of a comparison, we will look at the relationship between runs scored and on base percentage. The correlation coefficients are as follows:

2008: 0.7

2009: 0.72

2010: 0.77

2011: 0.8

Holy correlation, Batman! With an average correlation of roughly 0.75, clearly on base percentage is related strongly to runs scored. These graphs are very linear, with few outliers.

Now for a summary. Power is fairly important. Obviously it's useful to have, and teams with little power rarely score a lot of runs. Home runs are less important. If a team hits tons of doubles and triples, but few home runs, they'll be just fine offensively. On base percentage is very important.

As for how it applies to the Pirates. They need some more power than they're getting now. Theoretically, that should come from Pedro Alvarez. They don't need home runs as long as they produce adequate power numbers. They should produce middle of the road power numbers with the addition of Alvarez, and a lack of a black hole at first base. However, I do not think they need another power hitter. Many people advocate acquiring a power hitter to bat in the middle of the lineup, but I feel as long as the team has on base machines, like McCutchen, Tabata, and to an extent Jones have been this year, they should have a quality offense. In the future, I believe the offense is set to be competitive, providing the black holes are filled. However, that does hinge on getting massive power output from someone, most likely Alvarez. If he pans out, I am perfectly happy filling out the other "power" positions, like first and corner outfield, with high OBP players.

In short, I think the team, with the addition of Alvarez, should provide s good enough offense. There is no need for an additional power hitter or home run hitter. And the data seems to back up that theory to an extent. If the team is to have an elite offense, things would need to be different, but I don't foresee the Pirates having an elite offense.

And yes, I know correlation does not imply causation. I'm not saying that this tiny little quick study I did is anything definitive. More food for thought, especially for the statistically minded among us.

I realize there are many people about this site who understand everything I am going to say perfectly. This post is not for them. Nor is this post for those who angrily yell at everything the front office does with little reason other than the fact that the front office is doing it. This is an attempt to explain to others why the organization is not currently calling up the prospects we have been hearing so much about, and why, in my personal opinion, they should not. It will (hopefully) address specific issues some people have been questioning.

1. It is not completely about money.

Saving money always helps but, contrary to popular belief, Bob Nutting is not trying to steal money from everyone. If he was, he could probably just encourage people to drink more, and hire pickpockets to attend games. The main issue in delaying prospects that deserve to be up is control. It is a small price to pay holding a player back for a month or two, so the team can have an additional year of control down the road. Now this is where people may question money again, why they don't just sign said player down the road. Well, the Pirates are still a small market team, and while payroll is small now, who knows what contractual obligations they may have down the road when the time comes to pay up? The Pirates currently only generate more revenue than the Florida Marlins, and only by a paltry million dollars or so. If the prospects do not get it done, and revenue does not increase, it may be impossible to keep said players if they turn into stars. Holding them back a month or two allows another year of attempting to be competitive, and increasing revenue so the player can be kept. If the Pirates are successful and revenue booms this could be a moot point, but as is the point in this post, it's better safe than sorry. An additional year of control in a competitive year is much more valuable than a year of control when they are going to lose regardless.

2. The road to stardom is littered with failed prospects.

Some players get called up and are immediately great. Others fail miserably and never make anything of themselves. The Pirates are in a situation with incredible pressure to win from the fans, and to best make sure that happens, they have to ignore those very fans at present. Players that stay in the minors for a time to work out the kinks in their game tend to have a higher rate of success than those that don't. The Pirates are not in a position where they can miss much, if at all. They will be vilified if a player like Alvarez or Tabata fails, so why take that chance? They might succeed immediately, but they might not. And while a more successful team than the Pirates can take these chances on a player (like the Braves), the Pirates cannot. They must do everything they can do assure success with their prospects. Keeping their prospects in the minors is no guarantee  to do that, but it ups the odds. The Pirates front office is walking a tightrope, there is no margin for error. Plus, evey player still has something they can work on in the minors. None of them are complete, as Cutch was when he was finally brought up. If there are things they can still do in the minors (Power and line drive % with Tabata, plate discipline with Alvarez, etc), there is no need to bring them to the majors. Delaying prospects in a time when they won't win is a sacrifice that is necessary to up the odds of success.

3. Now does not matter.

This is the biggest issue my dad has. He always asks me why the Pirates don't go out and sign a couple free agents to make the current major league team better. Well, aside from the fact that it wouldn't work (as Dave Littlefield proved), playing time now must be given to the guys currently on the team. Many of them probably won't make anything of themselves, but there is a small chance a few will. Many players on the team, like Clement, LaRoche, Milledge, Pierce, and even Cedeno, were all highly regarded at once, and still have some potential. Of all players available to the Pirates right now, there isn't a combination that will make the team win now, so the playing time is better used for guys who still have upside. Now this playing time could also be spread to prospects, but as discussed before, it isn't worth it to give up a year of control, and the prospects still have work they can do in the minors. The point is, prospects won't make the team win, and it could be detrimental to the future, and free agents will not make the team win, so why not give the time to guys on the roster with upside?

I'm almost ready to step down off my soapbox now. But it's not like I don't understand where the frustration comes from. The Pirates have won a whopping once (I think) since I've been alive. I would like a winning season as much as anyone else, and would love to see what the kids can do. But baseball decisions come first, and it's important to think with the head, and not the heard when discussing a baseball organization. All factors considered, nobody is perfect, and the team is making more good decisions than bad ones. It sucks now, we all get ribbed for being Pirate fans and it's annoying. But that still doesn't mean it's time to make rash decisions. It's better to be safe than sorry, and all we can do is be patient and hope for the best. I hope this post answered or clarified something for someone, but regardless I can only close it with a statement from none other than Yoda.

Patience, my young padawan.

Trogluddite's recent post about the 2007 Pirates got me thinking about how many wins that team would get in terms of each players WAR today (or in the last season they pitched if they are currently retired). A replacement level team would get 48 wins. The WAR of each active player is multiplied by 1.6, since we are 101 games through the season.

Ronny Paulino = 0.8 WAR = 1.28 WAR/162

Adam LaRoche = 0.4 WAR = 0.64 WAR/162

Freddy Sanchez = 2.2 WAR = 3.52 WAR/162

Jack Wilson = 1.9 WAR = 3.04 WAR/162

Jose Bautista = 0.7 WAR = 1.12 WAR/162

Jason Bay = 1.7 WAR = 2.72 WAR/162

Nate McLouth = 2.1 WAR = 3.36 WAR/162

Xavier Nady (2008) = 4.0 WAR/162

Ian Snell = 0.6 WAR = 0.96 WAR/162

Tom Gorzelanny (2008) = -1.1 WAR/162

Paul Maholm = 2.5 WAR = 4 WAR/162

Zach Duke = 2.1 WAR = 3.36 WAR/162

Matt Morris (2008) = -0.4 WAR/160

Matt Capps = -0.6 WAR = -0.96 WAR/162

Shawn Chacon (2008) = -0.4 WAR/162

Salomon Torres (2008) = 0.4 WAR/162

John Grabow = 0 WAR

Damaso Marte = 1.2 WAR/162

So, overall, this would add 26.74, or about 27 wins to the 48 win replacement team. Meaning the Pirates would finish with 75 wins with this team, still under .500, and about to lose players to free agency.

Just for kicks I'm going to take the WAR of each player's career year with the Pirates.

Ronny Paulino = 2.6 WAR

Adam LaRoche = 2.5 WAR

Freddy Sanchez = 4.8 WAR

Jack Wilson = 4.3 WAR

Jose Bautista = 1.1 WAR

Jason Bay = 6.4 WAR

Nate McLouth = 3.6 WAR

Xavier Nady = 4 WAR

Ian Snell = 3.4 WAR

Tom Gorzelanny = 2.8 WAR

Paul Maholm = 2.7 WAR

Zach Duke = 3.3 WAR

Matt Morris = -0.4 WAR

Matt Capps = 1.6 WAR

Shawn Chacon = 0.2 WAR

Salomon Torres = 1.4 WAR

John Grabow = 0.5 WAR

Damaso Marte = 1.2 WAR

For a grand total of 46 WAR, or 94 wins, which would be enough to give them the NL wild card last year.

In conclusion, had the Pirates kept their players, based on the win values from Frangraphs, they would still be a below .500 time. And if they kept their players, and each had a career year, even though the odds are nearly impossible, they would still be a wild card team.

So in other words, yes, the Pirates have made the correct moves.

So I read a tweet by Whygavs that said "Can I be honest? I still feel like a kid on Christmas right now." And that got me to thinking about Christmas, and how the players exchanged today would compare to some of the toys in my memory. This is the players from todays trades and the Morgan Milledge trade just for kicks.

To begin with the players we gave up.

Jack Wilson - Jack is like getting clothes on Christmas. It's not exciting. It's not fun. It's never what you want. But it is a solid reliable gift, one that will stick around and be useful to you for a while. A little underrated.

Ian Snell - Snell is one of those talking Billy Bass things. The first time you see it, you're like "hey this is pretty funny, it could be kinda cool". A little later you change your mind to "This thing is freaking annoying. I will do anything just GET IT AWAY!" Plus a little thing you didn't know. That Billy Bass, yeah he hated you just as much as you hated him.

Freddy Sanchez - Freddy is like getting a bike. Not your first one, just a bike. It's better than your other one, it can be fun sometimes. It's reliable, it's useful. Basically it's an all around quality gift.

Nyjer Morgan - Nyjer is any generic action figure. It's exciting for a brief while, but you get bored of it really quickly. It holds sentimental value to you, but you realize there are much better toys out there. Really not a great toy once you get past the initial excitement.

Now for what we got in return.

Lastings Milledge - Milledge is like the Nintendo Gamecube. Nintendo dominated the game market for years, and everyone was waiting around to see what they would come out with next. Then you got the Gamecube. It was seriously disappointing. But if you get the right games for it, you can get it to be an extremely useful system.

Tim Alderson - Alderson is like an Ipod. It's exciting and everyone loves it. You have fun with it, it lasts for a while and is reliable. Barring some hardware malfunction, it's a great gift you're happy to have.

Ronny Cedeno - Cedeno is a Tomagotchi. At one time it was really popular. Nobody really knew why, but it was. Now everyone realizes how much it sucks. You can still keep one around and use it to pass the time if you need to, but you would really prefer something better.

Jeff Clement - A used video game. You heard it was a good game. The disc is a little scratched up so it can freeze from time to time. Being a video game, it can be great or it can be awful. It has the potential, but you're only going to find out once you play it.

Aaron Pribanic, Brett Lorin, and Nathan Adcock - Three of any sort of "stocking stuffer" type gifts. There's a whole lot of them, and you realistically don't expect much when you first get them. But every one of them does have the potential to be a pretty great gift, or be a useless pile of crap.

I had no particular reason for doing any of this. So there.

We all know there are plenty of people who seem to reject everything the Pirates do, often without reason. This is a post for those who write off all their moves, even the Hinske trade in which the Pirates paid a portion of his salary, as salary dumps in a big scheme for Nutting to make money. They also think of Huntington as the same person as Littlefield, comparing every move to the ever famous Aramis Ramirez trade. I could spend hours trying to prove how all of this is not true, and this front office is different and better, but I don't feel I need to on this site. I do, however, have a proposal for these so called fans.

If Huntington has not been making good moves so far, what exactly would you do to field a winning team? Not just sayign something like I would keep our good players forever! With detail, how would you take the team as it was when this front office took over, with Bay, Nady, McLouth and everyone else, and make it into a competitive, playoff team? Without any ridiculous ideas and unrealistic spending like saying we should have signed Mark Tiexiera and C.C. Sabathia. This is open to anyone with ideas, but I really want to hear from those who reject the current moves.

Tell me your plan.

I was reading mlbtraderumors, and they were having a discussion as to which players would go where by the deadline. I would like to list the trades involving the Pirates, both realistic and unrealistic, and see what people think about them. Organized by poster.

cnnrcrrll - Yankees trade George Kontos and a player to be named later for Ian Snell

RoyalsRetro - 2B Freddy Sanchez to Minnesota for IF Steve Tolleson and P Jeff Manship

                          P Ian Snell and P Jesse Chavez to Cleveland for 1B Ryan Garko and 2B Josh Barfield

enchinga - 1.F. Sanchez to Giants for J. Sanchez and Noonan.

                     2.Snell and Grabow to Yanks for Coke, Kontos, and Betances.

                     3.Zack Duke to Texas for Moscoso.

                     4.Maholm and LaRoche to Braves for Escobar and Medelin.

Pirateswillwinin2010! - Pirates trade Ryan Doumit C and Zach Duke to Philadelphia for Kyle Drabek SP, Jason    Donald SS, Andrew Carpenter SP, and Micheal Durant 1B

                                           Matt Capps and Ian Snell to Colorado for 2B Eric Young Jr, and P Casey Weathers

Now let the blasting of people we've never met begin.

As per The Insider on PIttsburgh Sports and Hockeybuzz. http://insidepittsburghsports.com/

Money is unreported as of yet, but apparently he took less to play for the Penguins, and that's why they stopped pursuing Nick Boynton. Expected to be announced Friday.

I really have nothing else to add, as you can just click the link for Depaoli's usually semi accurate info, but I need it to reach seventy five words. Now it is.

For intelligent Pirate fans only. We know that Bob Nutting has spent money since McClatchey stepped down. And that Neal Huntington has, quite frankly, done a hell of a job with what he was given. Most of the trades since the new guard took over have been good, and the Pirates are actually trying to win. So in direct contradiction to the other post, I suggest a display of support for the organization.

1. Support the team - go to games.

2. Symbolic acts - create a petition or craft a letter showing our support to Huntington and Nutting.

3. Well an ad campaign would just be waste, Nutting isn't letting the team go, even if the yinzers think Mark Tiexera will singlehandedly win us the World Series.

4. I can't respond to this one, the other guy says to hire a new GM to try to make the team good, but they already did.

5. Do nothing, just ignore the idiots.

There's no need to take the team back from anything. They're doing well, building a minor league system so they could compete for years. I, for one, would much prefer constant contending for the playoffs and/or World Series rather than one .500 season and more awfulness.

This post is only to contradict the other one. I've stopped trying to change the minds of those people, but I know there are plenty of fans, particularly on these boards, that know the Pirates are doing well and have the patience to wait rather than trying to buy free agents in a haphazard attempt at one not awful season (Kinda like we did when PNC park opened).

So please, intelligent, maybe not articulate, but certainly real baseball fans, join my in my support of the current Pirates organization, and help us undo the evil that was Dave Littlefield.

So I was up the other night thinking there has to be a good new age way to analyze hockey players, ala Sabermetrics in baseball. All I kept thinking is that Plus/Minus could be a very useful statistic, but it doesn't truly measure the goals a player contributes to his team and directly measure the ones in the other team's favor. So I came up with a formula using a player's goals, primary and secondary assists, powerplays drawn and the effectiveness of those powerplays, giveaways and the results of those giveaways, and penalties taken and the result of those penalty kills. The resulting formula is as follows.

((Goals * .5 (assuming that the player scoring the goal is 50 percent responsible for it's actual being scored)) + (Primary Assists * .35 (assuming the primary assister is 35 percent responsible)) + (Secondary Assists * .15) + (Powerplays Drawn * (League number of powerplays drawn / league number of powerplay goals)) + (Shots on drawn powerplays * (league number of shots on drawn powerplays / league number of powerplay goals) + (goals on drawn powerplays)) - ((giveaways * (league number of giveaways / league number of giveaway goals)) + (shots off giveaways * (league number of giveaway shots / league number of giveaway goals)) + (giveaway goals) + (penalties against * (league penalties against / league penalties against goals)) + (penalties against shots * (league penalties against shots / league penalties against goals)) + (penalties against goals))

In my estimation this formula should measure the true number of goals a player contributes to his team or against is, weighted appropriately against league averages. Unfortunately the statistics I require are not available or recorded or I just could find them, so I went through play by plays by hand of the Stanley Cup Finals and recorded stats from those seven games. The results of my formula are as follows.

<!-- BODY,DIV,TABLE,THEAD,TBODY,TFOOT,TR,TH,TD,P { font-family:"Arial"; font-size:x-small } -->

The average is somewhere around 0.2. So by my estimation the most effective player was Johan Franzen, the least effective was Niklas Kronwall, the most effective Penguin was Maxime Talbot, the least effective Penguin was Chris Kunitz.

This is only a rough formula come up with at about four in the morning last night. It seems to skew towards forwards and be innacurate towards defensemen, but seems to work well enough for me. The results are also probably pretty skewed due to the extremely small sample size, but I was too lazy to look at any more play by plays.

Let me know what you guys think.

Connor