Tim Benz: Pirates hopes of winning 'in the margins' is easier said than done

Pittsburgh Pirates manager Derek Shelton laid out the key to his team’s 2025 improvement on a 76-86 record a year ago.

“I think you win in the margins, very much so,” Shelton told reporters in Bradenton, Fla. “We have to win those margins.”

Exactly how wide are these “margins” we are talking about, Shelty? Because you may want a little extra space.

I get Shelton’s point. With one of MLB’s lowest payrolls, the Pirates are going to have very little room for error.

In games they are winning, the bullpen can’t blow the lead. In games where they are trailing by one run, they can’t quell their own rally with a baserunning mistake. In games that are tied, every ball better be thrown to the proper base.

Because they just don’t have the talent to make up for those mistakes.

“There are so many of those instances where it’s like, ‘If we would’ve done that, that game would’ve been different. If we would’ve got that done, that game would’ve been different. We would’ve won that game.’ I’m talking 15-20 games. You could maybe round up to 30,” Pirates designated hitter Andrew McCutchen said at PiratesFest. “If you win 15-20 of those 30, you’re in a different position. So that’s how I look at it. It’s not like (in) 15 to 20 to 30 of those games we just got flat-out beat. We were in it. We didn’t execute. We lost.”

Sure. To a certain extent, that’s true. But isn’t it true for every MLB team?

The Pirates’ run differential was minus-74 in 2024. The only teams in the National League who were worse were the 62-win Miami Marlins (minus-204), the 61-win Colorado Rockies (minus-247) and the Washington Nationals (minus-104).

Now, that’s a wide margin, except it’s one Pirates would like to narrow or even flip.

Conversely, the Pirates weren’t bad in one-run games. They were actually 25-26 in that category last year. They were 7-8 in extra innings.

The Pirates played 77 “late/close games.” The average MLB team played 76. Those numbers are amassed through any game situation in the seventh inning or later when the batting team is leading by one run, tied, or has the potential tying run on base, at bat, or on deck.

So they aren’t out of the norm there.

Now let’s look at, say, the Cincinnati Reds — a team that was just one win better than the Bucs (77-85). They were much worse in one-run games (15-28). What about the 83-79 second-place Cubs, who were 23-28 in one-run games?

Now, let’s apply McCutchen’s rationale to them. How many of those games can those teams count on winning in 2025? How many of them will come against the division rival Pirates?

Then there are the American League West champion Astros. They were an 88-win team despite going 18-27 in one-run games. Using “Cutch Math” on them, those guys may have been a 100-win team.

In fact, if you apply ESPN.com’s expected win-loss record — runs scored [squared]/(Runs scored [squared] + runs allowed [squared] — to the Pirates last year, their total actually drops to 72-90. Meanwhile, the Reds jump to 82-80, the Cubs go to 89-73, and the Astros (161 games) go to 91-70.

None of this is to say McCutchen and Shelton are completely off the mark. The Pirates bullpen only converted 60% of its saves (24th in MLB). They blew 29 saves, tied for third most.

At the plate, the team’s OPS in late-close games was .636 (25th in the league). In those situations, the Pirates’ 199 strikeouts were the most in the National League and second most in baseball. Their meager 13 homers (in 631 at-bats) were 24th.

The fielders committed 91 errors, the ninth-most in MLB. Their defensive efficiency rating of .687 was 25th in the big leagues. The team with the best fielding percentage in the majors was the Arizona Diamondbacks at .989. The worst was Miami at .980. That’s living within the margins, and the Pirates were just below the league average at .984.

So McCutchen and his manager are right. They need to make contact more often in clutch situations, and they need more hits that produce runs. They need to pitch better late in games, especially with the lead. They need to catch the ball more often and throw it to the right base more accurately.

You get the point. Let’s hope the Pirates’ players do, too.

But I guess we’ve also got to hope that no other teams in MLB do as well; otherwise, that point will become moot.

Because they are allowed to have margins, too.