It’s always nice when the kids come home to visit.
The older I get, the more my dying brain cements around the idea that fans invoke “small sample size” primarily when they don’t like the results. In a small sample size, Joey Bart is doing very nicely as a new member of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who’ve come to play the San Francisco Giants this weekend in a 3-game series.
He’s 7-for-23 with a trio of dingers, a double, and 8 RBI to go with 5 walks against just 8 strikeouts. That’s a triple slash of .304/.429/.739 in a measly 28 PA. Now, it’s not like he never did this for the Giants. Back in August 2022, he went 14-for-28 with 2 home runs and a double in 29 plate appearances; and if you back it up a bit to the ned of July, he had a 3 home runs in 28 PA stretch that included a 10-for-27 run. He never had the walks, of course.
So, did the Pirates “fix” Joey Bart or simply provide him with an opportunity that carried far less pressure? Henry Davis is supposed to be their star and Bart’s his backup. The Pirates aren’t carrying the pressure to compete, either. John Baker is the farm director, which probably has very little to do with anything except the following:
- I went to high school with him and he was one of my favorite people I had class with; unfortunately, the first story I can remember about him is one that’s not suitable for a baseball blog. Teachers liked him, too, which just means he was a fun guy to be around. This is just a personal bias where I presume that when he’s a part of something that thing is automatically 10% better; and,
- He was a veteran backup catcher in the majors. Maybe he shot Bart a text or something that was along the lines of a Simpsons quote and because it wasn’t a 1,700-word ordeal explaining swing decisions, it relaxed the former Giant.
Or maybe it’s just a small sample size.
On the other hand, the Pirates have amassed an interesting collection of former Giants who’ve never missed an opportunity to windmill dunk on their former team. Bart joins Bryan Reynolds — .308/.346/.481 in 55 career PA at Oracle Park; .309/.362/.433 in 24 games & 105 PA against the Giants period — as expendable former top prospects while Connor Joe — who’s hitting .286/.383/.457 in 81 PA this season; .346/.427/.539 in 89 PA (23 games) against the Giants; .370/.443/.574 in 15 games at Oracle Park — was a Churn victim who managed to rebuild his life after being tossed upon the shore; and, if you want to get weird with it, Andrew McCutchen, a career .791 OPS at Oracle Park and in 70 career games against the Giants, a .289/.363/.467 line survived Bobby Evans’ desperation to reinvigorate his career.
Reynolds has failed to get a hit in just 6 of the 24 games he’s played against the Giants for his career: 9/11/19, 6/17/22, 6/18/22, 8/12/22, 5/29/23, and 7/15/23. Joe has failed to get a hit in 5 of his 23 games against the Giants, and two of those were late-game pinch hit appearances. McCutchen has 78 hits in 70 games against the Giants going back to 2009. He’s never failed to gather fewer than 4 hits in a series against them. Will the trend continue? Is it a trend at all?
Or is it all just small sample size?
Weirdly, the Pirates have won 3 out of the 4 series at Oracle Park in the Farhan Zaidi era, the exception being 2022, when the Pirates lost 100 games. They’re 8-6 on the road so far this season and the Giants are 5-7 at home. Thankfully, Blake Snell’s spot in the rotation — which Alex Pavlovic suggests could be cursed:
The Giants lost 8-2. They have been outscored 55-12 when this spot in the rotation comes up. They’re off tomorrow before three games against Joey Bart’s Pirates.
— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) April 24, 2024
— won’t be a factor in this series, and Pittsburgh’s numbers against right-handed pitching is simply bad. They have a team wRC+ of 85 (26th in MLB) for that split against a 90 wRC+ combined lefties and righties (25th). Their 105 wRC+ against left-handed pitching is 15th.
As for the Giants, they’re trying to finish the month on a strong note. They’re 6-4 in their last 10 games which has seen two series wins sandwiching a series split against a division rival. A sweep sets them up to end the month at .500 or better (depending on how the first game in the next series in Boston goes), which would be ahead of where I thought they’d be, given their first couple of weeks.
The Giants will compete for a Wild Card spot for most of the year and so there’s no pressing need for them to be anything better than around .500 for the next few months. I wouldn’t let a series sweep fool you about the quality of the team over the rest of the season — because it’d be a small sample size — but it sure would be nice, and even if it isn’t probable, at least it’s plausible. Unless, you know, all those former Giants go off on them. Which… what are the odds?
Series details
Who: Pittsburgh Pirates vs. San Francisco Giants
Where: Oracle Park, San Francisco, California
When: Friday (7:15pm PT), Saturday (6:05pm PT), Sunday (1:05pm PT)
National broadcasts: None.
Projected starters
Friday: Quinn Priester vs. Kyle Harrison
Saturday: Martín Pérez vs. Jordan Hicks
Sunday: Jared Jones vs. Keaton Winn
Where they stand
Pirates, 13-13 (4th in NL Central), 109 RS / 112 RA,
Giants, 12-14 (4th in NL West), 107 RS / 127 RA,
Pirates to watch
Jack Suwinski: Three games at Oracle Park: 4-for-12 with 2 home runs. In 8 total games against the Giants, 5 home runs and just 6 RBI but also 10 strikeouts against just 3 walks. Those homers are his only extra base hits in the 9 he’s had against the Giants overall. This season, he’s off to a tough start (.179/.261/.295 in 88 PA) and even though he’s basically a league average hitter for his career (102 wRC+ in 2+ seasons), he’s definitely a guy who owes a decent chunk of his MLB career to getting to face the Giants.
Rowdy Tellez: The Bay Area native from Elk Grove figures to get at least a smattering of boos from his hometown fans after his choice words concerning his native lands. We’ll see if that does anything to motivate his performance out of a bad start to the season: .183/.275/.225 in 80 PA. That’s a small sample size, too, but he’s hit just .194/.326/.361 in 12 games at Oracle Park and has a career .666 OPS against the Giants with just 2 HR in 23 games.
Jared Jones: MLB Pipeline still ranks him as the Pirates’ #3 prospect, but when I look at what their 2nd round pick of the 2020 draft has done in just 29 innings so far I wonder, “He’s only #3??” He’s averaging 97.3 mph with his four-seamer which is 97th percentile fastball velocity, according to Statcast. He pairs that with a 2,500+ rpm slider which has a 51.1% Whiff rate (that is, “the percentage of a player’s swings that don’t make contact with the ball”). Those are his primary pitches. If he threw a sinker instead of a slider, he’d be the perfect Giant. He also has a curveball and a changeup. The curveball seems tantalizing, but the batted ball data on it isn’t in his favor (1.000 slugging). He’s used his changeup just 3.7% of the time, but it’s been mostly in two-strike situations and served as an examplary out pitch (50% PutAway%). A great prospect who’s currently Pittsburgh’s best player.
Oneil Cruz: 6-7 shortstop???? Ridiculous pull power! He seems good for one Splash Hit, even if he’s also off to a bad start (.242/.299/.364).
Giants to watch
Thairo Estrada: Despite a tough season line of .232/.253/.400, he’s really started to pick things up here in the back half of April. In his last 13 games he’s gone 14-for-45 with 4 doubles, a triple, and a pair of home runs. That’s good enough for a line of .311/.340/.578 (.918 OPS). Can he sustain this success? The glove is there, but the Giants need his bat.
Kyle Harrison: Pirates hitting .243/.338/.375 (.713 OPS) as a team against LHP, and their right handed hitters in particular have a .786 OPS against. Righties have an .840 OPS against Harrison right now and lefties have a .762 OPS. He’s allowed 6 earned runs in 10 innings at Oracle Park this season, but has a 13-1 strikeout to walk. It’s both a small sample size and trouble. Joe, McCutchen, Bart and especially Bryan Reynolds (.387/.472/.613 in 36 PA against LHP so far this season) will be tough outs.
Mike Yastrzemski: Like Estrada, he’s started to pick things up here in the back half of April. He’s hitting .321/.387/.429 (.816) in his last 10 games. The Pirates haven’t been a good matchup for him, though (20 games: .139/.269/.354) and he’s going to see a lot of velocity, which he’s struggled with so far.
Prediction time