The 1972 Pittsburgh Pirates won the National League East Division title and would have gone to the World Series had they not imploded in the ninth inning of the final game of the Championship Series against the Cincinnati Reds. The Pirates have won the World Series on five occasions: in 1909, 1925, 1960, 1971, and 1979. They also won the NL pennant in 1901 and 1902 in the days before the World Series. Yet many Pirates observers (including this writer) believe the 1972 edition was the best team they ever had. That team finished 96-59 in a strike-shortened season.
They did it even though their 404 walks and 6.7 walk percentage were dead last in the NL. Only the California Angels of the American League were worse in those categories. But while the hapless Angels finished fifth in the AL West Division with a 75-80 record, the Pirates were on the doorstep of a second consecutive World Series appearance. How did they do it? They did it by leading all of Major League Baseball in that statistic dismissed by the analytics gurus, batting average. As a team, they hit .274 and scored 691 runs. Only two major league teams scored more runs that season. Those Pirates were known for their power, yet their 110 team home runs were just slightly above the major-league average. Mostly, they were hitting the ball and stringing together hits.
The 1972 Pirates Were Loaded
Manager Danny Murtaugh retired after winning the 1971 World Series. The team inherited by his successor, rookie manager Bill Virdon, was the envy of every manager in baseball. San Diego Padres manager Don Zimmer told Bob Smizik of The Pittsburgh Press, “You take your normal good team… and you can catch two or three guys hitting at the bottom of the lineup who you feel you can get out with decent pitching. But on this club, the guys hitting seventh and eighth could bat third or fifth on other teams.” That latter point is a slight exaggeration – the Pirates’ shortstops generally hit eighth and weren’t dangerous hitters – but point taken. The Pirates were the cover story in the July 3, 1972, issue of Sports Illustrated. The two-page photo spread above the title “Four Murderers in a Row” showed Willie Stargell, Al Oliver, Manny Sanguillen, and Roberto Clemente in the batter’s box at Three Rivers Stadium, poised to swing their bats. (Ironically, the photos were taken on July 18, when San Diego’s Steve Arlin tossed a two-hit shutout against Pittsburgh.)
What Virdon didn’t inherit was the luxury of writing the same players on his lineup card and sitting back and watching the game. Clemente was limited to 102 games in right field due to injuries. Big first baseman Bob Robertson, who slugged 26 home runs in 1971, was mired in a season-long slump that saw him finish with a .193/.291/.346 slash. Thus, Stargell moved in from left field to start 99 games at first base. Stargell and Clemente missing time in the outfield led to considerable action for Gene Clines and Vic Davalillo. Some young players were away from the team for periods of time to fulfill military duty. Versatile Rennie Stennett was hitting and pushing for playing time in the infield and outfield. All told, Virdon used 117 batting orders, excluding pitchers, in 155 games. Virtually everybody Virdon plugged into the lineup could hit.
Thou Shalt Not Pass
What they didn’t do was draw walks. Here are the walk rates of every Pirates position player with over 100 plate appearances in 1972, and, for fun, four pitchers. The major league average walk rate was 8.5 percent. As you can see, only four Pirates were above-average in that category, and some walked with less frequency than some of the pitchers.
Stennett is obviously the most extreme case here, drawing just nine walks in 109 games. However, Sanguillen wasn’t far behind him. Of the 21 walks he drew in his 136 games, only 10 were unintentional. Some batters try to hit the ball where it’s pitched. Sanguillen and Stennett hit the ball if it was pitched.
“They don’t take any pitches,” marveled Philadelphia Phillies manager Frank Lucchesi, speaking about the Pirates to Associated Press after they recorded 25 hits against his club during a Memorial Day doubleheader. “Two strikes and you throw the ball outside, and they still hit the thing.”
New York Mets pitcher Jerry Koosman echoed that sentiment to Bill Christine, writing for Baseball Digest. “It is impossible to throw the ball past Pirates hitters,” said Koosman. “Even when you pitch them out of the strike zone, they find a way to hit it.” Said Montreal Expos manager Gene Mauch, “Stennett could get a hit swinging from the on-deck circle.”
General manager Joe L. Brown had an interesting theory about why his Pirates had so many free swingers. Brown told Al Abrams of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Most of the Latin American boys and others from warm climates have little else to do when youngsters but go to ball parks early in the morning and stay until it gets dark. While there, they stress hitting more than any other phase of the game. They swing away all the time.” But that doesn’t explain Oliver of Portsmouth, Ohio, or Cash of Utica, New York.
If this were an organizational philosophy of some sort, it seemed lost on Virdon. When Press sports editor Pat Livingston suggested to him that the Pirates were aggressive in everything they do, Virdon replied, “I guess you’re right.”
Thou Shalt Pass
The way the 1972 Pirates scored runs flies in the face of modern baseball theory. The importance of on-base percentage over batting average was never explained more clearly than it was by Keith Law in his book, Smart Baseball:
“At a team level, on-base percentage is the best predictor of a team’s run production, which should be obvious with a moment’s thought: put more runners on base and make fewer outs and you will score more runs. With just 27 outs at your disposal each game, hitters who reach base more frequently (and thus make outs less frequently) will improve your offense.
In MLB history, the correlation between team OBP and team runs scored per game is huge – stronger than the correlation between team batting average and runs scored.”
The above is, of course, irrefutable. It’s a theory that the modern Pirates, first under general manager Neal Huntington and then under his successor, current GM Ben Cherington, have taken to heart. Unfortunately, in recent years, the result has been too many players looking at called third strikes in apparent efforts to draw walks or run up pitch counts. To the annoyance of many Pirates fans, this has occurred many times with men on base. The mantra “a walk is as good as a hit” is true most of the time, but not, say, with a runner on second base and two outs. While I agree that OBP is more important than batting average, I’m also old school. I was 14 years old and saw the 1972 Pirates, and I don’t think that having one or two Sanguillens in the lineup is the worst thing.
So, how did the 1972 Pirates do it? They were clearly an anomaly. During that era, batting average was important, and those Pirates did “batting average” better than anybody. They were so good at it, their OBP didn’t suffer much. Their .324 OBP was sixth in the majors.
It was an exciting style of play, certainly more exciting than watching the “three true outcomes” for three hours. Boston Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey once suggested to Ted Williams that he stop giving batting tips to opposing hitters. (Al Kaline of the Detroit Tigers was a favorite pupil.) Williams replied that when Yawkey hears the crowd cheering, it’s because somebody hit the ball, and that helps the owners and players make more money. He wasn’t wrong.
