Why can't we score? Why no big hit? Why is a man in scoring position as good as a weevil boring holes in Pirates bats?

The plaintive cry of the run-starved fan is a better harbinger of a Pittsburgh spring than a robin's song. Even a guy like me, who believes the best way to score runs is to simply get a lot of men on base and then hit the ball a long way, has to concede that Pittsburgh's combined on-base and slugging averages don't entirely explain the woeful offense.

Walks give teams more chances to score, but they don't mean much in getting those runners home. The Pirates were the worst in baseball at driving runners home last year, and they've started this season even worse.

Let's define what we're talking about here. For years, stats geeks have disparaged the RBI because it fails to account for how many runners a batter finds or doesn't find on base. So Baseball Prospectus came up with the Others Batted In percentage. It looks at the number of runners a batter finds on base, and credits him for the percentage he brings home.

The average major-league non-pitcher plated 14.7 percent of the runners he found on base, while the average Pirates non-pitcher knocked in 13 percent. Freddy Sanchez (19.6, seventh best in the league), Sean Casey (16.5), Ronny Paulino (15.2) and Jason Bay (14.9) were the only Pirates to top the major-league average last year. Sanchez also was the best in baseball at getting runners in from third (57.7 percent).

This stat isn't entirely fair on an individual basis. If you come to bat with a man on first and double him to third, or if you're walked with a base open, or if your manager has you move a runner up with a "productive out," your OBI percentage drops because no runner scores. The two worst marks among major-league regulars last year were David Eckstein (8.6) and Jack Wilson (8.8). Thus spake scrappiness.

It's worse this year. Going into last night's game, Wilson had come to plate with 31 runners on base, 14 of them in scoring position, but had plated only one. Adam LaRoche has plated one of 24 runners, 12 of them in scoring position. As a team, the Pirates have scored a woeful 10.3 percent of runners. Any quibbles about this stat on an individual basis fade away when applied to a team.

What separates teams that score their baserunners from those that don't? Hint: It ain't making productive outs.

BP says the top-six teams in baseball last year for bringing ducks in from the pond were the Indians, Tigers, Angels, White Sox, Rangers and Mets. The bottom six were the Astros, A's, Nationals, Red Sox, Reds and Pirates. Not surprisingly, the designated-hitter league makes more of its opportunities than the bunting league.

Beyond that, the biggest factor in plating runners is pure and simple: batting average. The top-five teams for plating runners all were among the top 10 in overall batting average; five of the six bottom teams finished 20th or worse in batting average. The Red Sox were 16th.

Commentators like to separate batting average with runners in scoring position from the overall number, but over the course of a season that becomes a waste of time. Rare is the team where the two numbers end far apart; only then does it mean anything.

The Pirates are not an exception. They finished 22nd last year in overall batting (.263), 17th in batting with runners in scoring position (.266) and 14th with runners in scoring position and two outs (.251). So why were they last among the 30 teams in plating runners on base?

The Pirates lacked the long ball. They had the lowest slugging average in baseball. The Astros, A's and Nationals also fell among the bottom five in slugging and so didn't plate many of their runners. Meantime, five of the top six teams in OBI percentage finished in the top 10 in slugging.

Nothing else matters here as much as hitting and slugging. The Indians' and Tigers' batters had the third and ninth most strikeouts in baseball but still plated a higher percentage of their runners than all the other teams because they hit and slugged. The A's batters had a great strikeout-to-walk ratio yet left a lot of runners stranded because they lacked hits and extra-base hits.

The Pirates did some little things right last year, topping the league average in stolen base success (75 percent to 71 percent) and sacrifice flies (49 to 45), but were last in baseball in slugging and extra-base hits. All those tutorials in playing the game the right way didn't keep them from leading the league in grounding into double plays either.

They've done relatively well with extra-base hits in the first 10 games, and have cut down on rally-killing double plays, but the singles have disappeared, and it doesn't help that the average NL team walks about three times for every two Pirates walks. The Pirates began last night hitting .230 with a .290 on-base average and .371 slugging average in a league that has managed .250/.326/.387.

Fans shouldn't expect many more walks, but they should expect more hits and more runs. The little things they're missing aren't good bunts or grounders to the right side. They're singles.