The Pirates' Andrew McCutchen (22) and Neil Walker (18) celebrate their 5-1 win over the Nationals along with Jordy Mercer (10) and Pedro Alvarez (24) on Tuesday, July 23, 2013, in Washington.
About Dejan Kovacevic
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Sports Columnist Dejan Kovacevic can be reached via e-mail
By Dejan Kovacevic
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
http://triblive.com/sports
Published: Sunday, July 28, 2013, 10:39 p.m.
It's been a decade and change.
It's been a dozen years with no change, really.
It's been exactly 12 years, three months and 20 days since Todd Ritchie threw ball one way outside to formally, fittingly christen PNC Park. And in all the time that's passed, not a single pitch of consequence for the home side — meaning one that involved a pennant or playoff chase — has been thrown.
Not until 7:05 p.m. Monday, when Francisco Liriano will pitch to Matt Carpenter, when the Pirates will face the Cardinals for the first of a five-game set between teams separated by a mere couple of games for the National League's best record.
Biggest series in PNC Park history?
Let's just say the folks at Elias Sports Bureau would laugh and hang up if you called with a request to research the rest.
And it's not just this game or this week, but all 14 — yes 14 — meetings left between these teams down the stretch. It's setting up as a mano-a-mano unseen in these parts since, what, John Milner's grand slam at Three Rivers climaxed the fantastic but ultimately futile chase with the Phillies in 1978?
Should be a blast.
And you know what's got to be the most uplifting part from the Pirates' perspective?
They belong in this matchup.
This isn't like the past two summers, when there were surges but never really that feeling of certainty they'd hang around. This is different. Sure, St. Louis has Major League Baseball's No. 4 offense and is miles ahead of the Pirates' 24th-ranked unit, and the Cardinals' pitching is a close No. 4 in ERA to the Pirates' No. 1, but the teams are legitimately comparable as a whole.
And that, if you ask me, is primarily because these Pirates play some serious defense.
First thought that always pops to mind about the Cardinals, whether under Tony La Russa or now Mike Matheny, has been their fundamentals. You've heard it time and again when they execute a play properly: That's why they're the Cardinals. They and the Twins have been cited forever as the models across baseball, from Legion ball on up.
Well, the Pirates have been as good in the field as anyone, maybe better.
Moreover, that facet has become their identity, their mojo, if you will.
As Liriano was telling me last week in Washington, “This team is about who we are in the field, when we're all out there together. We make the pitches, and all our guys make the plays.”
They sure make a lot.
Forget fielding percentage, where the Pirates rank 19th. Antiquated stat based wholly on the subjective scoring of errors.
Forget most of the advanced formulas, too. They're all over the place, and they'll remain that way until someone starts tracking hit velocity, trajectory and fielder placement.
Let's look instead at the simplest of all because no defensive statistic boils it all down quite like batting average on balls in play, or BABIP. Put plainly, BABIP counts how often the ball is hit into fair territory — not home runs — and how often it results in an out. It doesn't account for any other factor.
In this one, the Pirates rank No. 1 in turning 73.2 percent of batted balls into outs, all other variables eliminated.
Neat, huh?
Wait, I've got one more, far less formulaic: The Pirates rank next-to- last in being selected for the nightly web gems on ESPN's “Baseball Tonight.” They've also had only two No. 1 web gems all year, those being an Andrew McCutchen catch and Liriano's between-the-legs grab of a grounder.
So how does that low standing jibe with being the best defensively?
Again, it's simple: The Pirates' defense is more of an assembly line than a highlights machine. Intensive scouting reports — seriously, they're as thick as phone books — offer background for Clint Hurdle and his staff. Ray Searage instructs his pitchers and catchers to pitch to specific spots, Nick Leyva aligns his infield accordingly, and, on occasion, there are even wild shifts aimed at essentially trapping the batter.
The result tends not to be dramatic. Roller to Neil Walker, flip to Gaby Sanchez, 4-3 putout. That sort of thing.
“We don't have a lot of bling,” Hurdle tried to explain. “The extraordinary is the ordinary. That's as simplistic as I can put it, and that's actually the term we use with our players. Make the play. Get the out.”
Sanchez was even less blingy about it: “For us, with the pitching staff we have, it's not about the crazy plays. It's about making the routine plays, being gritty, getting 27 outs.”
Take that, Cardinals.
And bring it on.
Read more:http://triblive.com/sports/dejankovacevic/dejancolumns/4429623-74/pirates-cardinals-ball?printerfriendly=true#ixzz2aQjXPZaf
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