Why Are These Bucs Winning?

Obviously, a large part of the answer is pitching. Not just starting pitching, but pitching overall. The Bucs starting pitching was horrible last year with a staff including Charlie Morton, Ross Ohlendorf, Paul Maholm, Zach Duke, Jeff Karstens, and Brian Burres accounting for 131 of 162 starts. This year's rotation features Paul Maholm, Jeff Karstens, Charlie Morton, James McDonald, and Kevin Correia. Maholm started 32 games in 2010, going 9-15 with a 5.10 ERA. Duke was 8-15 with a 5.72, Karstens 3-10 with a 4.92, Morton was 2-12 with a 7.57, McDonald came over in a trade and was 4-5 with a 3.52, and KC was in SD, going 10-10 with a 5.40 ERA.

Those stats don't look too promising and the offensive additions to the team were Matt Diaz and Lyle Overpaid. Diaz was brought in to hit lefties as he is a .326 career batter against them. He also came cheap, at $2 million, but is hitting .220 vs lefties and is yet to homer . Overpaid was brought into lend a run driving left handed bat and solid defense to the 1B position. Overpaid is a career .272 hitter and his 162 averages are as follows: 17 HR, 74 RBI, 40 2B, and a .798 OPS. Obviously, Lyle has not performed to expectations, especially not for his $5M salary. He is hitting .229 with 5 HR and 25 RBI and a .666 OPS, translating to 12 HR and 60 RBI and his fielding is .990, .05 below his career average. He made 6 errors in 153 games in 2010 and his career high is 11 in 158 games in 2004. He currently has 6 errors, on pace for 14.5......

So one would think with a pitching staff coming in lugging an astronomical ERA and the offensive weapons brought in to offset it's ineffectiveness being fairly futile, the outlook would be something like another 100 loss season. But no sir, not these Bucs. I have said that a lot in the last month and that is because it is true, not these Bucs. They are never out of game, they play more fundamentally sound than teams of the recent past, they come back when they're down, and they're 34-33.

The pitching has been superb, to put it mildly. Ray Searage certainly deserves his share of the credit for that, but so do the pitchers. Morton has bounced back remarkably, going 7-3 with a 3.21 ERA. Maholm is 3-7 but with a 3.12, Karstens is 4-4 with a 2.66, Correia is 8-5 with a 3.73 , and McDonald is 4-4 with a 4.80. All of these guys are performing at career levels and the bullpen has been more than reliable. Resop and Moskos have been on fire and Joel  "The Hammer" Hanrahan has 19 saves in 19 attempts with a ERA of 1.39. Outstanding.

The offense has struggled outside of the production of Cutch and Walker. Kdro has been a major disappointment and mercifully went to the DL. Overpaid and Diaz have been mediocre at best. Snyder and Doumit were producing well, but are both injured of course. Tabata's AVG is down but OBP is unreal by comparison. GI Jones has been average and Xavier Paul slightly above. Brandon Wood hasn't done much and outside of a 2 week stretch, Ronny Cedeno still flat out sucks.

This leads me to conclude that while the pitching is the main catalyst in this potential turnaround, the overall attitude of the ball club is different, as well. While the offense isn't pumping in runs, they are getting timely hits in close games.There is also a little bit of luck involved, but luck is only notable if you take advantage of it or put yourself in a situation to benefit from it. The Bucs have done both.

The Manager also deserves some praise. Clint Hurdle is a kind of a d*ck. He's short, sarcastic, and smarmy in a lot of interviews. But he has the respect of the players and plays to win. He might run the team out of an inning here or there or sometimes have a slow hook, but the good outweighs the bad. He knows for a team lacking power to win, they need to steal bases and play good defense. He knows that for a team that isn't going to score a ton of runs, you may need to use 3 relievers in one inning to keep your opponent off the board. He knows a ball in play that can be fielded is better than trying to paint the corners and walk a ton of guys. And the best part is, he employs it all in every game. A manager might not improve a team's W/L total by more than a few games, but his decisions have earned us more victories  67 games into his first season than RoboRussell's did during his 3 years at the helm.

Right now, Hurdle needs to keep the training rolling and keep the guys focused on the future and not the past. Past Pirates teams would fall in the tank, realizing that they are not much different than the 105 loss team of a year ago. Not this team, not these Bucs.