We all remember the first two months of the season too well. The pitching staff was dominating baseball and the bullpen was the best in the league. The only thing missing was the offense. It wasn’t that the offense wasn’t contributing much. No, this offense was on pace to set the wrong kind of records. It was on its way to being the worst offense in the history of baseball. Hitting Coach Gregg Ritchie’s job was being called for and the panic began that the Pirates needed a bat.
Fast forward a month and a half, and things look different. The pitching has fell off some, but is still very, very good with their 3.54 ERA and the hitting is still the second worst in the National League at .242. In the month of June however, the Pirates had a .268 avg, .329 OBP, .455 SLG and a league leading 39 home runs. Instead of just Andrew McCutchen swinging the bat well, it’s been a team effort.
“It definitely is a little easier showing up and just going out and playing when you have eight other guys out there that are doing a good job,” McCutchen said. “Us showing up ready to hit is the biggest thing. We aren’t watching strike one, strike two go by and trying to protect after that. We are swinging and ready to hit every pitch. That’s something that you need and is a big difference right now.”
Pirates’ manager Clint Hurdle echoed McCutchen’s thoughts and said it’s much nicer to see the team hit well as a whole.
“It’s good for everybody,” Hurdle said. “You want to look and say wow, we can do this or we can do that. We’ve got more men showing up offensively. We found some rhythm and it’s making sense to some people and we’ve got more than one guy engaged which is basically what we had before.”
“There’s nobody in there you wonder if he’s going to get a hit tonight. You feel confident that everyone is going to give you a couple good at bats through the course of the evening.”
The offense took off in June, but it really seemed to improve after Rod Barajas hit his walk off homer against the Nationals. That night, on May 8, that’s when the city of Pittsburgh was introduced to the Zoltan sign.
“It was just something we decided to have fun with,” Barajas said of the sign. ”When we first started it, Tabby (Jose Tabata) was swinging the bat well and it’s just something we are having fun with. Hopefully it keeps going, hopefully I keep swinging the bat well and hopefully it brings us some luck.”
If you don’t know what the Zoltan sign is, it’s from the comedy “Dude, Where’s My Car.” The Pirates take their hands and form a Z with them after a big hit or big moment in the game. In no time, the trend caught on throughout the city. Greg Brown and Steve Blass both wore bubble suits to replicate the movie, there are t-shirts with the sign on it all around town and the hashtag #Zoltan is all over Twitter after a big Pirates hit. For the team however, it’s just something they are having fun with.
“We started that just as a joke and it escaladed into a big thing,” Garrett Jones said with a smile. “The city has caught on to it and it’s just fun. It’s just another aspect to make the game fun. You get a big hit and throw up the Zoltan sign. Everybody is looking to do it. It keeps everybody in the game and on each other. It keeps us a close-knit unit.”
It’s not just the offense that is on board with it, but it’s the pitching staff too.
“I mean it’s something that everybody is on board and it’s fun and funny sometimes,” Erik Bedard said. “It keeps everybody together and creates a nice atmosphere. At least everybody has something in common when we’re putting the Zoltan up. It’s pretty fun.”
While the Zoltan is catching on all around the team and the city, that doesn’t mean it is all around baseball. Just ask newly acquired Pirate Drew Sutton.
“I had no idea what that meant,” Sutton said laughing. “After my pinch-hit double, when I had no idea what was going on, I ran back in the dugout and walked up to someone and said ‘Alright, somebody explain to me what this Z (as he does it) is.’ I made sure they explained it to me so I knew what to do next time.”
Whether the Zoltan sign has anything to do with it or not, the offense is picking up their slack from earlier this season and the pitching staff didn’t doubt them one time.
“Our lineup is amazing right now,” McDonald said. “It’s like every guy is a tough out. There is no easy out in the lineup right now. Everybody is swinging the bat, everyone is on fire right now. The offense has picked up and I knew they would. I have been saying ‘Just wait, just wait be patient.’ This is the offense you see now.”
All-Star Joel Hanrahan is confident about this offense as they have come back to win the three save opportunities that he ended up blowing.
“These guys are riding high right now,” Hanrahan said. “They’ve put up what, five runs in close to 10 games in a row or something like that. That’s what we knew was there and at the beginning of the year and why we weren’t complaining about it. We knew it was going to come out and they’re picking us up right now. That’s what you need on a good team.”
The offensive production right now perhaps means more to Bedard than it does to any other Pirate, especially with his recent struggles.
“You need that support,” Bedard said. “The pitching staff or the offense doesn’t carry a team the whole year. You need that combination. When the pitching staff is doing well, you just need a couple of runs. When they’re struggling a little bit like I am right now (laughs) we need more than a few runs.”
With all of the runs, the team is feeling confident. As Hanrahan said last night, the’ll go up with any other team with their confidence right now. But is this team the new Lumber Company?
“You never know, hopefully,” Jones said. “We swing the bats well and we want to keep it going. We have a long season ahead of us and our confidence is high. We want to keep that going and keep it rolling to put Ws on the board.”
As Jones said, it is a long season and can the Pirates sustain this success, especially with the bats? There is no answer for that except to wait and see. Just as easily as a team can get red hot with the bats, they can also turn ice cold.
“I think hitting is really contagious not to sound cliche,” Sutton said. “It’s contagious when you get in cold spells or hot spells. You see guys hit balls hard and it gives you a little bit of confidence to go up there and say I’m going to try to barrel something up too. Good teams stay in hot streaks longer than they do in cold streaks. It’ll be interesting to see what happens the rest of the way.”
Photo Credits: North Side Notch
Discussion about this post