Why are the 1949 Pirates Playing So Well?
Checking out the early stats
Why are the 1949 Pirates Playing So Well?
The Pirates are in first place in my 1949 Diamond Mind Baseball replay. They’ve got the best record in the major leagues, and they just keep on winning.
But why? What are they doing right?
Batting
Interestingly enough, the Pirates don’t seem to be hitting much better than anybody else.
It’s still early, but you can see here that they’re not exactly setting the world on fire. Ralph Kiner is having a good season so far, but that is to be expected. Pete Castiglione is also playing well, though not over his head.
Now, that 1.313 OPS by Kiner is like a Barry Bonds number — I’m aware of that. But he isn’t the only one scoring runs. The Pirates are doing a good job getting runners on base, and have a fairly efficient offense.
As you can see here, the Pirates don’t necessarily have the best offense in the National League. The Giants are hitting better in just about all categories. The Pirates lead in runs scored, but only just barely, and they don’t hit home runs quite like the Dodgers or take walks quite like the Braves. They also don’t have any sort of running game.
The Pirates have been fairly good at avoiding hitting into double plays, which is kind of surprising given how few bases they have stolen.
I sorted this by OPS, as it’s one of the better offensive statistics you can use to sort things out in Diamond Mind Baseball. And, as you can see, the Pirates are really a middle-of-the-road team.
Pitching
Pitching is where we see the difference.
Werle, Bonham, Chambers, and Dickson have all pitched extremely well. That pen of four starting pitchers might be good enough to see them through to the end, assuming there are no major injuries or other issues.
The thing you might not notice here is that tiny BB/9 ratio, which is the key to Pittsburgh’s success. Again, we’ll see if they can keep it up.
The Pirates have given up only 52 runs so far, almost half as much as the hapless Brooklyn Dodgers. And that’s the real key. Don’t walk guys, and don’t give up runs.
I think those R/9 totals are off. Whatever the actual number is, though, it’s pretty low for the Pirates.
And this is where we see the real impact. The Pirates don’t have a great OPS against: .614 isn’t quite as good as the .585 the Giants have. However, that 1.09 WHIP, caused mostly by not walking guys, is making the difference.
Fielding
Fielding and pitching are conceptually the same thing, just with slightly different words and terms.
We’ll only focus on team fielding here. The Pirates have an excellent fielding team, causing opponents to hit into more double plays than any other National League team.
This is presumably because the good Pirates starters — the ones who invoke those double plays — throw deeper into their starts, largely because they’re not giving up tons of walks.
Outlook
Here’s where we’ve been so far with the Pirates:
Note that this includes wins against St. Louis, New York, and the defending champion Boston Braves. The Pirates haven’t played the Dodgers yet, but they have played difficult competition already.
It’s also interesting to see how many left handed pitchers the Pirates have been using. It just might be that Pittsburgh is inadvertently taking advantage of Diamond Mind Baseball’s lefty/righty split system.
We’ll see how the Pirates do against the Dodgers. However, with this kind of starting pitching, I’d be surprised if they were knocked off from their perch. This team is legitimately good.