Pittsburgh Pirates: 2016 Season In Review

After three straight seasons with at least 88 wins and postseason appearances, the Pittsburgh Pirates had a disappointing reversion back to their losing ways.

In 2013, the Pittsburgh Pirates ended a 20-year streak of losing seasons when they won 94 games and earned a wild card spot. They beat the Cincinnati Reds in the wild card game, but lost to the Cardinals in five games in the National League Division Series. They followed that up with an 88-win season and a 98-win season, making the playoffs as a wild card team in both of those years, but losing the wild card game to Madison Bumgarner in 2014 and Jake Arrieta last year.

Expectations coming into this season were modest for a team that had won 98 games the year before. Sports Illustrated projected them to win 87 games but finish out of the postseason. Fangraphs had them with 83 wins and Baseball Prospectus pegged them to win just 82 games and neither site expected the Pirates to make the playoffs.

It turned out the experts were correct. The Pirates did regress. Not only did they fail to make the playoffs, they didn’t even have a winning record, as they finished the year 78-83 (with a rain-shortened tie against the Cubs). The main reason for the Pirates’ disappoint season was their pitching staff, from both the starters and relievers. As you can see below, they improved slightly on offense and defense from 2015, but declined greatly in pitching.

2015

18^th in wOBA (99 wRC+)

27^th in defense

6^th in starting pitcher fWAR (3.53 ERA, 3.34 FIP)

7^th in relief pitcher fWAR (2.67 ERA, 3.40 FIP)

2016

13^th in wOBA (99 wRC+)

24^th in defense

24^th in starting pitcher fWAR (4.67 era, 4.43 FIP)

25^th in relief pitcher fWAR (3.57 ERA, 4.12 FIP)

• wRC+ = Weighted Runs Created Plus (measures offense on a scale of 100 where 100 is average. A wRC+ of 120 would mean a player or team is 20% better than average on offense. A wRC+ of 99 would mean a player or team is 1% below average on offense). This metric is adjusted for league and ballpark.
• fWAR = Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement
• ERA = Earned Run Average
• FIP = Fielding Independent Pitching (estimates a pitcher’s run prevention independent of the performance of their defense).

In 2015, the Pirates had the second-best ERA in baseball, at 3.23. It jumped by nearly a run this year, to 4.22. The starters’ ERA went up by more than a run per nine innings and the reliever’s ERA went up by 0.90.

The season started off well enough. The Pirates were 15-9 in April and 14-13 in May. It all fell apart in June, when they went 9-19 and dropped to 14 games behind the Cubs heading into July. In July and August the Pirates bounced back to go a combined 29-23. They then finished the year with just 11 wins in their last 30 games, including losses in seven of their last nine. They ended up 25 games behind the Cubs in the NL Central.

Along the way, the Pirates saw their franchise player have the worst season of his career and their young ace struggle with injuries and a greatly reduced strikeout rate. They traded one of the best closers in baseball and two starting pitchers they had hoped would be a big part of their rotation.

Let’s take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2016.