With two outs in the third inning last night, something happened that Pirate fans have been dreaming about for three years. Gregory Polanco and Starling Marte both laced hard-hit singles off of Marlin starter Tom Koehler, then Andrew McCutchen brought them home with a double. The Pirates didn’t look back en route to a 5-2 win. Back in the last year of the Pirates’ Dark Age, it was this vision of light that sustained us; three young outfielders with power and poise, ready to lead the Pirates somewhere better.
Of course, it was maybe five weeks ago that the Pirates were rumored to be interested in Justin Upton and that felt like a thing that made sense for them. He was lugging a .653 OPS into the break with a triple slash line (.237/.315/.338) that looked almost identical to his disappointing rookie season (.235/.307/.343). There were enough small signs (his plate patience, his strong start) that made it unfair to say that Polanco would never hit, but given that this Pirate team is good enough to win now and that outfield is by far their biggest strength in the minor leagues, it didn’t feel like blasphemy to wonder if maybe the Pirates should upgrade on Polanco and use him as a very valuable trade chip at 2015’s trade deadline.
Before the deadline even arrived. Polanco started heating up. In the 15 July games after the break, Polanco hit .311/.364/.492. The eight doubles he hit in those 15 games were only one fewer than he hit for the Pirates in all of 2014. The hot streak has extended into August now with no signs of abating — this month he’s hitting .348/.400/.548 with three homers, three doubles, and three triples. A quick glance at his Brooks Baseball page makes the difference apparent: first, he adjusted to breaking balls, then he adjusted to off-speed pitches. Now he’s hitting everything hard and he’s not driving pitches into the ground, and as a result he’s splitting gaps and running for forever when he’s not hitting the ball over the fence. We’ll have to see how this adjustment sticks (he’s also swinging and missing at more off-speed stuff, though that’s being compensated by how hard he’s hitting off-speed pitches) if pitchers adjust back, but this is the Polanco that romped his way through the minor leagues.
Marte’s been on fire lately, too. Marte hit his 13th homer on July 1st to tie his career high, but slumped off a bit over the remainder of July and the first part of August. It wasn’t as dramatic as some of his slumps have been in the past, but it didn’t quite match the early-season high that helped keep the Pirates afloat during Andrew McCutchen’s slump. He went 2-for-5 with a triple in the finale of the Mets’ series, though, and in nine games since (counting that one) he’s got six extra base hits and his first two homers since that one on July 1st.
There is little to be said about Andrew McCutchen that you don’t already know, but let’s go with this: when McCutchen hit .314/.410/.542 last year, it was the third straight season in which he went .300/.400/.500. This is cherry-picking a bit by using arbitrarily round numbers, but a big deal was made at the time about how Willie Mays never had three straight .300/.400/.500 seasons (this is arbitrary because Mays hit .318/.392/.605 in the 12 seasons from 1954-1965, which is why he’s Willie Mays). When McCutchen basically went 0-for-April with his knee issue, I figured that streak was certainly over with. McCutchen is now hitting .297/.397/.510 in 2015, and is hitting .327/.429/.572 since May 7th, which you can more or less directly pinpoint on the calendar as the exact day that he broke out of his early season slump. A healthy Andrew McCutchen is a force of nature.
There’s more to the Pirates than Polanco, Marte, and McCutchen, obviously. Jung Ho Kang has been incredible, Pedro Alvarez has been bashing the ball this month, Francisco Cervelli keeps on plugging along, Neil Walker has been very good since July 1, etc. etc. The “best outfield in baseball” debate is pointlessly arbitrary (the Pirate broadcast team was almost spitting at the notion that someone dared think that Ozuna/Yelich/Stanton could be better than the Pirates’ trio during last night’s broadcast, which is just a silly thing to be mad about). Seeing these three in the top three spots of the lineup, filling the field up with a grid of laser beams, flying around the bases (well, McCutchen doesn’t quite fly anymore, but close enough), scoring, and driving in runs is pretty special, though. Back in 2012 when we first imagined this outfield, we didn’t know if it was any more likely of a future than the Jetsons’ flying cars. We’re finally seeing it in the second half of this 2015 season, though, and it’s a big part of why this team hasn’t slowed down, despite the drop off from the starting rotation.
Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
