Photo: John Cordes/Icon Sportswire

The naysayers will tell you that the Pirates are worth watching once every five days, only on the days that their phenom, Paul Skenes, pitches.

But for as bad as the Pirates have been, and it’s been a rough year in Pittsburgh, there’s actually something that the team excels at. They lead MLB in Defensive Runs Saved from their infielders.

It’s actually not even that close.

Most Runs Saved From Infielders

That defensive excellence starts with third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, who leads the position with 9 Runs Saved. Over the last four seasons, Hayes’ 65 Runs Saved are 22 better than the next-closest third baseman, Ryan McMahon.

Hayes is good at making the hard plays look routine and has excelled at turning balls hit down the third base line into outs this season, which was also true in 2022 and 2023. Hayes has won 2 Fielding Bible Awards and it wouldn’t be a surprise if he won another.

The other top defender within the Pirates infield is Jared Triolo, who won the NL Gold Glove for utility infielders in 2024. Triolo has 3 Runs Saved at second base, 2 at third base, 2 at first base and -1 at shortstop this season, giving him a combined 6 Runs Saved. If he played second base full time, he’d probably be among the league leaders. He has 10 career Runs Saved in 71 games there.

But what has led to the Pirates doing so well at turning ground balls into outs (they rank 3rd in that stat behind the Rangers and Braves) and leading in Runs Saved is the defensive positioning of their infield. The Pirates have 18 infield positioning Runs Saved, the most of any team.

They’ve been particularly well positioned when playing what we call a partial shift,* They rank 8th in terms of how often they’ve used a shift against a batted ball but tied for 1st in infield positioning Runs Saved from shifts.

* Partial shifts are ones in which the second baseman or shortstop is near second base and other infielders have significantly adjusted positioning as well.

 The Pirates have a veteran second baseman in Adam Frazier and a shortstop in Isiah Kiner-Falefa who have been reliable defenders in the past. They’re players who may not have the most range but, if positioned well, are going to make plays. That’s what’s happened this season.

Frazier has 2 Runs Saved from the Range & Throwing component of Runs Saved but the Pirates have saved 5 runs in how they’ve positioned him, tied for the most for any second baseman in MLB.

Similarly, Kiner-Falefa also has 2 Range & Throwing Runs Saved but the Pirates have 6 Runs Saved from positioning him, one run shy of the most in MLB (the Padres have 7 Runs Saved in how they’ve positioned Xander Bogaerts).

Pre-2013, SIS awarded positioning Runs Saved credit to the player. That credit now goes to the team as with the advent of shifting and positioning cards, the team has more control over where its players play. If we gave that credit to the player now, both Frazier and Kiner-Falefa would rank among the leaders in Runs Saved at their position.

In terms of what we’re specifically talking about, here are two good examples of infield positioning by the Pirates involving Frazier and Kiner-Falefa (here and here). The first example is a play that’s routine because of where Frazier is stationed. The other is a tougher play, but one made possible by how the Pirates positioned Kiner-Falefa and the scoop by Emmanuel Valdez, who is part of a committee effort at first base that has produced 3 Runs Saved.

The shame of all this is that the Pirates are 30-46 and in last place in the NL Central entering Friday. The team is averaging an MLB-worst 3.2 runs per game and their infield has the lowest OPS in MLB (.616) by 26 points.

For as good as the infield defense has been in trying to make up for the team’s deficiencies, the rest of the team’s defense has been problematic. The Pirates otherwise have a combined -18 Runs Saved this season.