After a 12-15 opening month of April, the Pittsburgh Pirates went 13-13 in May and have done their best to at least stay relevant thus far. Let's take a close look at how the Pirates performed in May.
First off, here's the game-by-game breakdown for the offense:
Let's start by looking at the offense. As a unit, the team hit .236 this month -- pretty bad. They scored 5 or more runs only 10 times in their 26 May games. They collected 7.8 hits per game, scored 3.9 runs per game, drew 3.8 walks per game, and recorded 7.8 strikeouts per game. They let opposing starters pitch 6.1 innings per game. None of those numbers are good.
Individually, Andrew McCutchen and Ronny Cedeno were the best Pirate hitters. McCutchen hit for a line of .286/.381/.500 with 4 homers and 15 RBI. Cedeno was almost just as good with a .288/.374/.413 line with 2 homers and 10 RBI.
Neil Walker struggled quite a bit in May, hitting .226/.288/.387 with 3 homers after a very solid month of April. Jose Tabata started the month slow but has turned it around a little bit lately and finishes May with a .250/.373/.309 line. Lyle Overbay rebounded from a tough April with an okay May hitting .253/.300/.458 with 4 home runs.
The story of the month was pitching. Check out these numbers.
The pitching staff consisting of Kevin Correia, Paul Maholm, Charlie Morton, James McDonald, and Jeff Karstens was ridiculously good, compiling a 2.82 ERA all together. There were only 4 different games in which the starter gave up more than 3 earned runs. Not only that, but the rotation has strung together 13 straight outings allowing less than 3 earned runs to end the month. That is tremendous.
The staff allowed 6 hits per start, 1.92 earned runs per start, gave up 1.65 walks per start, recorded 4.15 strikeouts per start, and allowed only 0.58 home runs per start.
Here are the individual starters and their May ERA's:
Morton: 2.06
Maholm: 2.14
McDonald: 2.86
Karstens: 3.16
Correia: 4.15
With those numbers, you'd think the Pirates would have been well above .500 for the month. Sadly the offense couldn't get it done when they needed to get it done and it was just an even month for the Bucs. They will be hard pressed to get another month with pitching anywhere near this good, so it's a real disappointment that they couldn't win more games.
If the pitching keeps this up, the Pirates have a serious chance at finishing above .500 and breaking this streak. The offense is really going to have to step it though, because I surely don't think the pitching will continue to be THIS good.
What we saw from the May Pirates was a tale of two sides of the ball, they pitched but didn't hit, and it evened out perfectly at 13-13, a slight improvement from April when they were 12-15. Here's hoping they improve even more in June.