As the daily pitcher rank program keeps adding data, Jason Schmidt emerged as a starting pitcher who burned brightly for a short time. It’s an interesting career, but in looking at his opposition batting by season, his fifteen triples allowed in 1999 stood out as an unusual number. The Day by Day Database contains opposition batting back to 1973, and in that time only three pitchers allowed more triples in a season. Larry Christenson allowed seventeen triples in 1976, Paul Thormodsgard gave up sixteen in 1977, and Bret Sabaerhagen allowed sixteen in 1988. Sabaerhagen’s high total is understandable, as he pitched half his games in Kansas City, a good park for triples. Christenson and Thormodsgard pitched in the peak triple era, 1977 seeing 7.24 triples per 1000 PA, the highest rate in the low mound and division play era.

Schmidt’s performance is most likely due to poor outfield play in rightfield. FanGraphs rates the 1999 Pirates rightfielders as the worst in the NL that season. Two of those outfielders, Brant Brown and Adrian Brown combined for -22 defensive runs according to FanGraphs. That works out to about two losses based on their defense. (Baseball Reference is in agreement, with the two at -2.3 defensive WAR.)

That minus two wins turns out to be huge. The 1999 Pirates fielded some very good players. Brian Giles, Kevin Young, and Jason Kendall combined for 16.4 bWAR. The Pirates were in the middle of a streak of losing seasons that would last 20 years. The team went 78-83 that season, their third best record of that era. With a decent glove in rightfield, they might have posted a winning season, and maybe built with their core from there. It’s just another example of a team that was poorly managed for a very long time.