Battling Bucs : The Pirates Offense

I am going to make a startling declarative statement that is going to confound a lot of you. The Pittsburgh Pirates offense is NOT a bad offense nor are they an "unclutch" offense.
I know that probably comes as a shock to a lot of you who have heard the narrative that this team is great pitching and awful hitting but it is the truth. Now don't take this to mean the Pirates are a great offensive team that is far from the truth as well. This Pittsburgh Pirates team is an average offensive team playing half of their games in a pitcher friendly park. Fangraphs and Baseball Reference have stats, wRC+ and OPS+ respectively which do a very good job summarizing offensive ability into one number. The Pirates in wRC+ rank 14th in all of baseball and in OPS+ the Pirates rank 13th. That is out of 30 teams placing them squarely in the middle. That is the Pirates true talent level, a lot of that is masked by their home park but it is the case.
My above statement about the Pirates not being a bad offense is in-arguably true but the fact remains that they score the 7th fewest runs per game plus we all see quite a level of ineptitude with our eyes. The normal point made here is that the team is "unclutch". First off this comes from their RISP numbers which as I have said many times is very misleading both because of the very tiny sample sizes at work and because of the fact that not all RISP opportunities are really "clutch" situations. There is no argument that "clutch" actually exists. Players don't just magically ramp up their game when a situation calls for it and anyone who would do so would never make it to the MLB to begin with unless they were other worldly talented. Think about we are talking about the best of the best of the best if these individuals are holding something back in 90% of their PAs and putting all effort into those other 10% they aren't going to last.
Now "unclutch" is something that certainly does exists but at the major league level it is essentially non-existent. The same logic about clutch applies here if a player lets pressure get to him he has essentially no chance of making it with the best of the best of the best. The system would have eaten him up well before he made the major leagues. If such players do exist in the majors we are talking about a select few who must be amongst the top 0.01% of most skilled players to ever play this game. Regardless this line of thinking is flawed because the Pirates are doing just fine in high leverage situations which are true "clutch" situations.
However this still doesn't explain the Pirates offensive problem which surely does exist. The problem is quite simple one really and one we problem all know. It is the way the offense is constructed. The Pirates strike out a lot and while that isn't a problem in itself (see the Braves and Red Sox) it is a problem when looking at the rest of the team makeup. The best way to combat a high strike out rate is to put a lot of runners on base which can be done one of two ways by making good contact and maintaining a high average or more often by drawing a high number of walks. The Pirates are far from a good contact team and their walk numbers are league average. The Pirates are a team built on power. Teams built on power who strike out and don't get a ton of base runners are going to have to rely on the big inning and big innings come around at an inconsistent rate. Offenses like the Cardinals are built in such a manner, low power, low strike outs, average walks, good contact that brings about consistency.
The Pirates aren't a bad offensive team, nor are they unclutch, simply put the ingredients which make it up form a near perfect recipe for a highly inconsistent offense that at times is going to simply look lost. Adding to the problem is Clint Hurdle. Hurdle likes to play small ball but he doesn't have a roster built for that he has a roster built for the big inning which he frequently minimizes by giving away precious outs. It is reality that there are going to be times when this offense looks incapable of doing anything but used correctly it is also reality that while they wouldn't be able to carry the team they could indeed manage to pull their own weight. It is too late in the season to change the makeup of the offense so the only other choice is to start using it in such a way to take advantage of its strengths and minimize its weaknesses.