Joey Bart singlehandedly did enough this afternoon to lift the Pirates to a 2-1 extra-inning victory over the visiting Cardinals and help secure a series victory in front of a relatively small home crowd of 8,430 fans at PNC Park. 

With the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the 13th inning, Bart worked his way into a 3-2 count after fouling off some tough pitches and laying off ones out of the strike zone. Finally, on the eighth pitch of the at-bat against Chris Roycroft, Bart sent a sinker located in the middle of the plate out to deep left field to plate the winning run and send the Pirates to their fifth win of the young season: 

"We'll take it. Series win, especially in the division," Derek Shelton said. "Sometimes they're not pretty, but it's a series win. They battled the whole game. Obviously, offensively, we didn't get a lot going, but we continued to go, which I appreciate."

As Shelton alluded to, the offense didn’t generate any type of support for a pitching staff that largely held the Cardinals at bay throughout the afternoon. Bart did his part in collecting two hits, but a collective five-hit output in 13 innings played a large part in this game lasting as long as it did. The Pirates were held hitless for six innings against Cardinals starter Erick Fedde and their only other hits came from Endy Rodriguez, Ke'Bryan Hayes and Tommy Pham, the latter of which tied the game at 1-1 in the 12th inning. 

And it's not like these struggles were limited to a one-day occurrence. The offense has performed as one of the league's worst to begin the season, hitting a collective .198 -- 87 for 439 -- through 13 games. That's 29th of Major League Baseball's 30 teams. They rank 27th with a .590 OPS, 23rd with eight home runs and their 125 strikeouts are the most of anyone. Not exactly the recipe for sustained success. 

Oh, and going back to that team batting average, it's not just bad, it's historically bad. 

In Major League Baseball's modern era that began in 1900, this marks only the fourth time the team's batting average has been at or below .200 through 13 games. The others came in 1917 (.195), 1926 (.200) and 2020 (.191). The latter team started the season with a 3-10 record while the other two limped to 4-9 starts.

It is early on in a long 162-game season and there's plenty of baseball left to be played. But it's not like this team has a track record of recent offensive success. In fact, they've struggled to hit and score runs in years prior to this one, ranking among the bottom third of MLB teams in batting average and runs scored each year since 2020. 

Knowing this hasn't been the start the team has wanted from an offensive perspective, I asked Hayes what it's going to take to turn things around at the plate. In his eyes, it's all about having the right approach and generating offense in different ways rather than trying to hit the ball out of the ballpark every time. 

"As a unit, just figuring out how to get the first guy on of the inning, I feel like that kind of starts everything, whether that be a walk or a single. Then, I think whenever we have runners in scoring position, just being short to the ball and being selective and not trying to be too big with anything and just take what they give us," Hayes said. "I feel like in that last inning, (Bryan Reynolds) took a nice walk and then Cutch hit a ball right on the screws that just happened to be right at them. Then, Joey worked the count and ended up winning the game for us. So I think just being able to work the counts and being selective, but being selectively aggressive." 

The Pirates did draw nine walks in this one, an area in which they encouragingly rank third in all of baseball with 52 free passes. However, it's not resulting in enough run support on a game-by-game basis. That aforementioned sub-.200 batting average, along with the lack of timely hitting, are big reasons why. 

The Pirates have tried to supplement their lack of consistent hitting in other ways. They stole 19 bases through their first two series but only stole two bases during this seven-game home stand. They’ve also tried to execute hit-and-run situations and capitalize with runners in scoring position but are hitting just .205 in those circumstances. With the lack of power in their offense, the Pirates realize these are areas they have to be successful in and they haven’t gotten there yet. 

"You got to find ways to scratch across runs," Isiah Kiner-Falefa said. "Coming into the season with our pitching staff, we weren't expecting to have any big slug from anyone aside Joey, (Oneil) Cruz and Bryan. Knowing that, for us, we're just going in trying to score more runs than the other team, that's the approach. We don't have that $40 million player that can help the team score runs by himself, so we got to play with what we got. We're going to go out there and try to do the best we can. I think we're going to keep getting better and I think the big thing is situational hitting, doing the little things like hit-and-runs and stealing bases. We have to do those things better than other teams. That's our identity.”