Figuring Out How to Lose

Robert Redford, playing The Washington Post's Bob Woodward in the 1976 classic, "All the President's Men," remarked, after an afternoon of unsuccessfully trying to get people to talk about presidential corruption, "It's not just that they're sayin no. It's how they're saying no."

For the Pittsburgh Pirates, wallowing in the mire of yet another miserable season, it's not just that they're losing. It's how they're losing.

Consider: the Buccin' Ear began his/her faithful correspondence in this venue 22 games ago, when the Pirates stood at 11-27. They have since gone 11-11. Of the 11 losses, seven have been by one run. Of those seven, five have been in the final game of a series. Of those five, four would have resulted in the team either winning or sweeping the series. Of those four, three were lost in extra innings or in the bottom of the ninth. Of the three, two involved the Pirates surrendering a lead of four or more runs.

So where does the blame lie? Well, when 38 of your first 60 games are losses, it's clearly a team effort. However, if we look at the 22-game window that the Buccin' Ear has peered through, the first stat that jumps out is the 143 runs that the Pirates have scored during that time: 6.5 per game. That should produce a record better than .500, but it hasn't. Does that mean the fault lies entirely with the pitching? No, not exactly. In the 11 losses, the Bucs have scored a grand total of 28 runs, or 2.5 per game. The problem, it seems, is one of consistency. If the Pirates had scored their "average" in their 11 losses, they would have won six. Had they scored their "average" in their 11 wins, they'd have lost just one. Result: a five-game swing, and a record of 27-33, rather than 22-38. This analysis does not take into account the other 38 games played this year.

Last season, the Buccin' Ear found the woes of the Pirates easy to trace: they were a horrible team at the plate, one that was impatient, given to striking out and rarely walking and ridiculously dependent on Jason Bay. The present team can't not be pinned with this criticism. The problems, to this observer, revolve around consistency, primarily in the starting pitching and most specifically in the person of Oliver Perez. Most puzzling is the team's monumental failure on the road, a subject to be addressed in a subsequent post.