Some good stuff from the Stats Geek

The Stats Geek has a pretty insightful column today about the source of the Pirates' offensive woes, and it's not where'd you'd think it. He opens up with a statement that I agree with wholeheartedly:

This team is often misrepresented by the casual fan as having a lack of major-league players. In fact, nearly every Pirate would make nearly every team, though not necessarily the starting lineup.

Finally, a member of the Pittsburgh media saying "it's not the players." He goes on to expound upon the problems. He says that it's a lack of top tier bats (Bay is our only one) but I'm not sure I'd even go that far. I think this later statement covers just about everything:

Well, the Pirates have outhit their opponents in the leadoff, No. 3 and cleanup spots this season and have nearly held their own at Nos. 5 and 6. But they have been badly outclassed elsewhere, with the No. 2 and No. 7 positions the worst in the league.

So the heart of the lineup (surprisingly) isn't the problem. I've kind of had a gut feeling all year that all the talk about "adding a bat" is premature. We're getting Craig Wilson back in a very short period of time. Craig Wilson, aka the team's leader in homers and RBIs last year. Ward and Mackowiak have performed admirably to fill the four and five slots most of the year, though both are mired in pretty bad slumps right now, I think both of them are going to bounce back pretty shortly. The problem on offense has been our solution on defense, Sanchez, JWilson, and Castillo. All of them (except maybe Castillo) are performing below what we'd expect from them at the plate this year. This is good news for Pirates fans. I don't think it's much of a stretch to expect that Jack Wilson will have a much better second half at the plate than he did at the first half. Castillo is very young and he's learning very quickly. He just had a pretty rough slump, but followed it up with some big homers against St. Louis. Sanchez has been battling groin trouble since he's been moved into the starting lineup (I retract my statement about it being a mystery injury, if Lloyd played Bobby Hill last Tuesday, Sanchez must've really been hurt). You don't need to hit 200 home runs as a team to finish .500 or make the playoffs as long as you make the ones you do hit count (like Bay's three run dinger on Sunday) and you keep the table set for the middle of your order. Since I don't think it's unreasonable to expect Wilson, Sanchez, and Castillo to all have better second halves than first, I think that we could see a marked second half improvement in the Pirates offense. O'Neill's closing statement today is what I've been saying for a while:

Sprinkle more hits and walks through the lineup and you might be surprised at the team already here.