Pittsburgh Pirates: The franchise all-time bracket
By Bill Felber
Pittsburgh Pirates: The Franchise All-Time Bracket
No. 2 vs. 7 seed
The 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates were in some ways mirrors of the 1971 team. Clemente was gone, but Stargell remained, and Dave Parker had arisen as a powerful companion offensive force. Parker hit .310 with 94 RBIs, while Stargell —at age 39 – was still good for 82 RBIs. Bill Madlock led the team’s hitting stats at .328.
The 1979 team’s mound staff featured nobody with more than John Candelaria’s 14 victories, but Bert Blyleven made 37 starts and won 12 of his 17 decisions. The Pirates relied heavily on closer Kent Tekulve, who made 94 appearances, pitched 134 innings and finished 67 games, saving 31 of them.
The 2015 Pirates were the best team Pittsburgh fans have seen since 1991. Their 98 victories were good only for second in the NL Central, forcing them into a one-game playoff against the Cubs’ Jake Arrieta, who was virtually unhittable at that time. Arrieta and the Cubs won 4-0.
That 2015 team relied on its pitching. It ranked second in ERA at 3.21 and allowed a league-low 110 home runs.
Gerrit Cole emerged as a star, going 19-8 in 32 starts with a 2.60 ERA. Offensively, the approach emphasized balance, led by Starling Marte, Andrew McCutchen, and Neil Walker.
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Game 1: This game ends in a un-resolvable tie. Both teams produced identical 98-64 records good for .605 winning percentages.
Game 2: The 1979 team won both its LCS and the World Series. That’s good enough to beat 2015, which lost its only post-season game.
Game 3: Neither team featured an overpowering offense. But the 1979 team’s 99 team OPS+ is a couple of notches better than the 2015 team’s 97.
Game 4: Cole is the key to the 2015 team’s pitching edge. That club had a 121 staff ERA+, good enough to beat 1979’s 114.
Game 5: The 1979 team takes a 3-1 advantage thanks to its collective WAR of 46.0, 5.5 points better than the 2015 team’s 40.5.
Game 6: The 2015 team’s .981 fielding percentage is three points below the league average for that season. In 1979, the Pittsburgh Pirates only fielded .979 … but that was one point better than the league average.
Result: 1979 by four games to one, with one tie