As any championship team has, the 1979 Pirates had a deep roster from one through 25.
The pop brought by Willie Stargell, Dave Parker, Bill Robinson and Co. has its own history to write home about. That lineup led the National League in runs scored and OPS and finished second in the NL in batting average and home runs. It was historic in every sense of the word, and that's why the Pirates rose above the Orioles in the 1979 World Series.
But Chuck Tanner had another pair of tools at his disposal to help form the complete, 25-man roster. His emphasis on pitching and defense to support that great lineup helped the Pirates' late-season surge and, ultimately, the championship.
"They came to play every day. Chuck Tanner made sure of that," Bert Blyleven said before the 1979 team was honored for its 45th anniversary Saturday at PNC Park. "Chuck was a student of the game just like Jim Leyland or any good manager. If you see a guy not busting his butt, Chuck would get on you. Jim Leyland, I'm sure, would do the same thing -- I was never under him. The pitcher, like myself, just leave me alone. I knew what I needed to do. He didn't have to tell me. We had conversations, we had our differences. I wanted to go nine innings every darned time out. Sometimes that didn't work and you'd get pulled, and I realized that."
That realization, especially down the stretch of the season, revolved around the surge around that complement. The Pirates went 7-3 in their final 10 games of the regular season. In those seven wins, the opposition was limited to 1.2 runs per game while the Pirates' offense boomed for 4.6 runs per game including two games of 10 runs scored.
In their three-game sweep of the Reds in the NLCS, the Pirates' staff didn't allow more than two runs in a game. In the four games the Pirates won against the Orioles in that World Series, Baltimore scored two, one, zero and one run. The Pirates' offense produced 4.7 runs per game in their seven wins against the Reds and Orioles.
The Hall of Famer Blyleven was acquired in 1977 in a four-team trade. John Candelaria was a spry 25-year old who already had a 20-win season under his belt. Bruce Kison rose to have the best season of his career. The three each won at least 12 games for that rotation, which was effectively six men deep when adding in Jim Bibby's 17 starts. Bibby went 12-4 that season.
"When you get to a World Series it's usually the pitching that wins," Candelaria said. "We held them down the last couple of games. That's how you win. ... We had guys in the bullpen that were starters and everyone accepted it. We jelled as a team. Hitters are hitters but when you get to the end in the playoffs you're not scoring that many runs against the pitching. You're getting down to the nitty gritty. Name a team that hasn't won with pitching. That's what it comes to. I'm not just saying it because I'm a pitcher. It's just the way it is."
Kent Tekulve finished third in the majors with 31 saves. He added 10 wins, as did Enrique Romo out of the bullpen. Grant Jackson contributed a 2.96 ERA in 82 innings, and Dave Roberts posted a 3.26 ERA in 38 2/3 innings.
In Game 7 of that World Series, Bibby lasted just four innings as Tanner turned to his bullpen for a combined effort. Jackson did not allow a hit and walked two in 2 2/3 innings, and Tekulve walked a batter and held the Orioles scoreless in 1 2/3 innings to close the game. Baltimore mustered just four hits off of the Pirates' effort.
"I don't know that we did anything special," Tekulve said. "Everybody knew what their job was. The starter's job was to go out there and go as far as they could go and the bullpen -- fortunately we were deep in the bullpen in an era where most teams had a closer or a closer and a set-up man, we had a closer, a set-up man and the first middle man with myself, Grant Jackson and Enrique Romo. We were a little advantaged in the fact that we were three-deep when everybody else was two-deep. As far as the pitching staff goes, I think there would have been more attention to it if the offense wasn't so (gosh darn) good. We didn't have the rifle team to compare with the Lumber Company. We could all just pitch and get people out and handle situations and do the things that needed to be done.
"And we were balanced. There wasn't a soft spot in that staff so the other teams, if they could go through a couple of relievers in the first game of the series they didn't really have as much of an advantage in the second game in the series as if we went through a couple of guys in the first game of a series, they were kind of depleted. I think our staff was -- I'm not going to say underrated -- I would just say that it wasn't recognized quite as much because of the fact that the whole focus was on the lumber company and then eventually in 1979 the lumber and lightning with the speed that Omar Moreno added to it. The staff was always solid ever since I got here in '75, it was just a matter of we were really good and the offense was excellent."
Moreno was the best center fielder in baseball that season defensively. He played in all 162 games and led the majors in putouts among center fielders. The Pirates committed the sixth-fewest errors in the National League and were eighth in all of baseball in defensive efficiency.
Additionally, the Pirates finished fourth in baseball and second in the National League with 3.94 runs allowed per game. It rooted back to the pitching staff in that way, and it came to an apex at the right time in the World Series.
"I felt all along our pitching was better than theirs and that was the bottom line," catcher Steve Nicosia said. "Pitchers one through 10 were much better than Baltimore, I thought. Baltimore was great, don't get me wrong, and they had a great lineup but I thought we had better players and better pitching without a doubt. ... We had a mindset of just a bunch of warriors that were willing to do what ever it took to help their teammates and find a way to win, and that's what we did. We scratched and clawed all year. Nothing came easy. We battled every single game." Philly was great and Montreal was great, but we found a way to battle through them. That pitching staff was a bunch of guys that would battle and take the ball and 'I'm going to beat you,' and we usually won those battles."
