How many one run game did the pirate loose this year to date?

Answer 1

Thus far 25....Here is an interesting article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette's Tuesday morning sports page pertaining to this in a historical sense....

Stats Geek: Pirates could top 1-run loss record
Tuesday, July 04, 2006

By Brian O'Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pirates' annual hunt for dead October is particularly frustrating this year. Not because there was ever legitimate hope for a winning season, but because there is so much dashed hope in so many winnable games.

Maybe it's time to change our strategy as fans. Set a different goal. The Chicago White Sox set the all-time mark in 1968 with 44 one-run losses. Can this Pirates team break that record?

With their 24th one-run loss Sunday, one they came back from a seven-run deficit to reach, this team made a believer out of me.

Those 1968 Sox had advantages the Pirates don't. That was "The Year of the Pitcher'' so nobody scored much and close games were everywhere. The Sox lost nine games 1-0, 10 games 2-1, and 10 games 3-2.

The Pirates hit too well, and don't pitch nearly well enough, to lose that way. But as Sunday's game showed, this team seems to find a way to lose small.

It was the second 9-8 loss, something the 1968 Sox didn't manage once. Our home team's versatility in ignominy shows up clearly in these games that are not blowouts, but blow-ins. In the first 9-8 loss, against the Reds May 18, the Pirates blew a 6-0 lead in the first. In Sunday's game, they narrowed a 9-2 deficit with six runs in the seventh before loading the bases and not scoring in the ninth. Again.

The Pirates have lost a game 1-0, three games 2-1, four games 3-2, four games 4-3, five games 5-4, two games 6-5, two games 7-6, one game 8-7 and two games 9-8.

Thursday against the White Sox, when Jim Thome made the score 6-6 with an Allegheny River-splashing blast in the eighth, I thought how suspenseful such games might be if we didn't know how they all ended. Minutes later, Freddy Sanchez showed me up, hitting a leadoff ninth-inning home run to give the Pirates the rare one-run win, only their eighth this season.

That 8-24 record in one-run games translates to a .250 percentage. They have to keep that up to catch the '68 Sox, who went 28-44, or .388, playing in a lot more close games in that low-run era.

There's so much luck involved in one-run games, it's extraordinarily hard to lose three of every four. One bleeder through the infield, one long fly or one bloop and the Pirates would run the risk of tying it up or going ahead. Yet they routinely avoid these.

It's astonishing. On good teams and bad, records in one-run games are generally closer to .500 than their overall record. When the Pirates lost 100 games in 2001, they were 22-20 in one-run games. The 2004 World Series champion Boston Red Sox went 16-18 in one-run games. A year ago, when the Washington Nationals started 17-7 in one-run games, many mistook them for a good team, but they finished 30-31 in one-run games and 81-81 for the season.

That's called reversion to the mean, the theory that an unlikely series of events will be followed by more likely ones. "Hidden vigorish," the late announcer Bob Prince used to say. A coin that comes up heads nine times out of 10 isn't likely to continue that pace.

Yet the Pirates have defied the odds in consecutive seasons. Last year, the team finished 15-28 in one-run games, a .348 percentage considerably worse than their .414 overall record. This year's .250 manages to undercut the miserable overall .337.

How is that possible? Last year, closer Jose Mesa could be blamed for a mess of close losses, but this year the problem is not often with closer Mike Gonzalez but rather in middle relief. The overworked Pirates bullpen has 11 blown saves in 25 opportunities, a 56 percent save percentage. Only the Atlanta Braves (17 of 34) have been worse. Not coincidentally, the Braves are 11-21 in one-run games.

The Pirates aren't much for late comebacks either. They're only 2-42 when trailing after six innings, 1-45 after seven, 1-50 after eight. That's because, late in tight games, the Pirates have hit .218 and opponents .293.

Yet the biggest, most adrenaline-draining, suck-the-life-from-the-ballpark problem for these Pirates is the double play. The average hitter in a DP situation bangs into one 13 percent of the time. Going into last night's game, every current Pirates position player but Craig Wilson was either a little bit or considerably worse.

The Pirates have hit into 19 more double plays than the average team in the same situations, according to Baseball Prospectus. The worst offenders are Jack Wilson, Ronny Paulino and Joe Randa. All have hit into DPs at more than twice the league rate.

Wilson is a terrific shortstop, but he's no No. 2 hitter. He gets too many plate appearances for a guy with a .297 on-base average and 13 double plays on his batting ledger. Sanchez (.399 OBA) should hit second and Wilson eighth.

Maximizing the plate appearances of the best hitters would lessen the chance of topping 44 one-run losses, but you can't have everything.

http://www.postgazette.com/pg/06185/703243-263.stm

Answer 2

Yes. 24 is correct. They are 8-24 in 1-run games this year.

Answer 3

Counting today's (7/2) game, 24 losses.

Answer 4

a whole freakin lot
22 to be exact