Is There Some Higher Force At Work Here?

Where’s the motivation?

Though this year was going well until that terrible losing streak.

0 HR in 346 PA in Pittsburgh; 2 HR in 22 PA in AZ.

Most of those guys are righties and it’s been mentioned here before that PNC is tough on righties….right?

…is that with the exception of Milledge, all of them were over 30, often well over. Older players exhibiting declining skills shouldn’t be that big a surprise.

The only real exceptions are Milledge and maybe Hinske, who went back to hitting for power after he left. Neither of those is really conclusive, though. Milledge broke his hamate bone and had it removed shortly before we traded for him, a procedure that often suppresses a player’s power for a considerable time after that. Hinske’s time in black and gold was only 106 AB, a pretty small sample, and during his time with us he also put up what was by far the highest walk rate of his career, suggesting that he simply may not have seen too many drivable balls.

It’s an interesting confluence of circumstances, but not much more than that, I don’t think.

Nutting is too cheap to pay the power bill.

The Pirates also acquire Derrek Lee at the deadline. Not understanding what he was facing, he hit two HRs in his first Pirate game. He then got hurt and is still out.

are you saying that the evil baseball gods punished him for producing HRs after coming here! Awesome!

The Pirates bring in Eric Hinske to add a veteran whining presence

It’s pretty sad when the front office can’t even successfully choose a clubhouse cancer. :-)

Matt Stairs had about 1 HR per 23 PA in his career, but it was about 1 in 18 when he was a Pirate! Reggie Sanders was about 1 HR per 23 PA for his career as well, but he was about 1 in 16 as a Pirate! Don’t forget Garrett Jones: 1 HR per 42 PAs before joining the Pirates, and about 1 per 24.5 since. Home run hitters have a history of getting better when coming to Pittsburgh. Hey wait a second…that’s the OPPOSITE point of this article… :)

I love data, but I would want to see more than a handful of cherry-picked examples before reading anything into this.

it’s also worth pointing out that those guys also saw fastballs in other lineups, since they weren’t big pieces. Then came here and stunk seeing other pitches

I know that a lot of popular statistical research suggests that “protection” in an order isn’t real, but I think observations such as this do reinforce it. Let’s face it, the common thread between all of these guys — besides (to borrow a phrase from Dejan K.) the seven letters across their chests — is that the Pirates lineups have largely stunk. Guys like Church and Diaz go from being the 6th or 7th best hitter in their previous team’s lineup to being the 3rd or 4th best hitter with the Bucs.

I don’t have any statistical evidence to back up a 100-year-old belief, but it makes sense to me (for instance) that the presence of Albert Pujols influences both the pitches seen by the rest of the lineup as well as psychological makeup of his teammates (the team doesn’t need me to hit a homerun each at bat).

If you look at Lyle Overbay’s splits this year, he hit over 110 points higher out of the 6th spot than the 5th. And even better in limited appearances in the 7th spot.

I’ve often made the case that great players can raise the water level for the rest of the lineup. But I thought Jayson Werth could do that for the Nationals this year and I’ve looked foolish on that one. Who knows?

unfortunately, the view has had little effect on Albert Pujols any of the times he has stood there….