Believe it or Not, The Pirates Aren’t in a Bad Place

1-3-2025 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

Hoo boy, write a headline like that, and brace yourself for the barrage of comments that are sure to come right? Those of you who read my stuff, stick with me until I land the plane, you’ll get it.

I mean, it’s not firing on all cylinders either mind you.

This offseason has been painted as some kind of last straw, a time of desperation, a chance to change the course of a ship that clearly was headed for the jagged shores ahead.

I’m sorry, regardless of your patience level, it’s none of those things.

It’s another year of progression. Another year of growing interesting talent into serviceable and hopefully solid major league players.

The only thing that’s really changed this offseason is more fans decided the team should be firmly in the playoff hunt and because we’re people, we all know exactly how that needs to happen.

Let’s cut this thing down to the root.

Will the Pittsburgh Pirates have a better team and record in 2025 than they had in 2024? My answer is yes, with zero hesitation and next to know guessing about what else they might bring in yet.

In fact, just logically, let’s set aside record. I say that simply because a large percentage of you believe, or at least say often enough to have me roll my eyes, that Derek Shelton is so horrible at his job, the team you see on paper should be far and away better than the record they’ve achieved.

Let’s forget about the GM too. Again, many of you believe he’s so horrible, such a terrible evaluator of talent that even a half competent GM would surely have them measurably better by now.

Now we’re just talking players.

2020 started with the remnants of a bridge year that turned into 4 years of failing. Cherington was hired and decided to wait and see what he had for the most part, after honoring Starling Marte’s trade request that surely would have been fulfilled following 2020 anyhow.

2021, more players were moved out for low level prospects and it started to become more clear who was and wasn’t part of the plan. The team had a terrible 2020 with some talent still lingering. 2021 was almost the same relative result with even less.

2022 Many of the holdover prospects simply had to be tried out. Something that continued from 2021. Wil Craig, Cole Tucker as examples. Waiver claims filled holes, again as they hoped to be below mediocre. Still, they’d now locked in a couple players for what to the Pirates were long term contracts, and some of the acquired talent began involving themselves. Still stunk. My god did it ever look like they were going to never get the pitching together.

Those were all sifting years. Years meant to post poor performing teams that net big draft picks. As gross as that is to say out loud, it’s the truth, and by the way, it worked. The only reason we think this team should be better now is because they sucked and got Paul Skenes.

I say that with Henry Davis yet to emerge, Nick Gonzales just finding himself, Jared Jones looking to follow up what normally had no chance of being overshadowed as a rookie performance, and more starting to matriculate up here and stick.

They’ve cast off shot after shot at reclamation projects, and stop gaps, and all of that ground was laid in those first few painful seasons. The only good thing about 2020 was maybe that we only had to watch 60 games of that puke of a team, but even that came at a cost, development.

In 2023, it was time to start seeing what some of these guys could do. Cutch comes back, Cruz is looking to really take off, Keller is emerging, they signed an older but effective first baseman, but they still didn’t have enough pitching to make it real. Even before Cruz was lost for the season, it was clear they were short and still had some more sifting to do.

2024, more of the same, except different injuries to guys you wanted to see more from and a few big names returning from injury themselves too. Again, not enough, in fact so not enough the record remained the same, but something else happened on the way there, the team had suddenly replaced all their “shots at good”, all their “reclaim” guys, with real prospects, who had options, multiple places they could play, varying degrees of MLB success and failure. AND biggest of all, they had for the first time since the middle of the last decade, a starting rotation. A good one. One that wasn’t built from free agents that figure to be gone in a year or two.

We aren’t all the way to the 2025 season yet.

I mean, I roughly put together their starting outfit up there in the chart, but that’s right now, a lot can change still, new options can become available.

Even if they don’t. Which again, I don’t think is going to happen. I’m holding firm this team will hit 100 million this year, even if it’s dragging that figure across the finish line when the season is in the books.

I still see this team in a good place to progress. Not a favorite for anything, but a young team backed by more young options with upside and time to develop yet.

They have a rotation that should be strong to start and has a shot to be downright shut down if they get some more prospect love in 2025.

They have enough pitching to have some of it overflow into the pen, and while I’m sure they’ll add more, they have more optionable talent in that room than they’ve had in quite some time.

The hitters have a new coach, and while much of it under performed last year, it’s hard to think Cruz won’t take a bit of a step, Reynolds won’t repeat his performance at least and everywhere else, I think they’re 2 if not 3 deep for players who could wrestle away a job.

Do I think they need more? Oh hell yeah. If you want to get this writer to tell you this is a playoff team, I need to see bare minimum a corner outfielder who can hit 20 homeruns and at least a left handed reliever with some degree of pedigree.

Even so, say they just sit on their hands, this team has room under their collective ceilings to get there, I just wouldn’t call it likely.

The other side of the coin is their collective floors make me believe 75 wins is a pretty logical landing spot for the worst I see this unit performing if healthy.

Yell and scream about the owner all you want. Claim the GM is a boob, that’s fine. The manager is a world class moron, ok.

Despite all that, I really do not see a team that is going to take a step back here.

Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t set up to absorb an injury to Cruz, Skenes, or Reynolds, but I also wouldn’t see one of those injuries lead to Cal Mitchell, Chase De Jong or Bligh Madris coming up to fill in.

They can’t win without those 3 players, nothing significant anyway, but they have far more depth than they’ve had in a long time.

You have to have some picks and pick ups emerge as stars.

They’ve gotten one of those so far, and it’s Paul Skenes.

They’ve got a few who will continue to write their stories this year. Mlodzinski, Gonzales, Triolo, Jones, Oviedo, Suwinski, Davis, Endy, Horwitz.

I’m not saying all those guys will do any such thing, maybe 3 or 4 of them settle in at MLB regular who floats around the league for a while like Kevin Newman and Josh Bell are. But if a couple of them do, everything starts to look a lot smarter than it did yesterday.

Again, I happen to believe they should have replaced the manager. But look at those opening day setups again, do you really think he should have won a lot more games than he did? Last year he gave you the very best argument he should have been fired.

I still think they improve. Regardless.

I want to stress, this isn’t me saying I’m happy it’s where it is. I’m not. I hoped they could have signed better free agents if only to move them at the deadline and accelerate the prospect load they had to work with. I wanted them to sign some longer term guys at strategic positions of need in the hopes they could develop someone pressure free to eventually succeed the incumbent.

I wanted them to push kids up to the league a bit earlier and live with the growing pains from them as opposed to watching guys like Kai Tom take up space.

It’s not like I think it’s been a perfect journey.

I’m just saying, even after a bad road trip, where I blow a tire, get two tickets for speeding and one of the kids pissed their pants, when I see the beach, I’m gonna sigh, crack a beer and let all that shit go to appreciate what I do have.

You’re right about every criticism you have. From development to drafting to coaching and spending, you’re right.

But your team is still on the rise.

Maybe, nah, scratch that, definitely, not as fast as you want, maybe never as far as you want, but it is on the rise, because even if by accident, they’ve put together a group that really could grow together, backed by replacements for pieces that don’t fit correctly.

And it will be for a minute.

Even if they fire the GM and everyone below him after this season, this isn’t going into a full blown rebuild. There’s a decent, if imbalanced toward pitching base laid here, there’s no need like there absolutely was in 2019. There was not only not enough back then, there was next to nothing coming anytime soon. That’s not what this is. Take comfort in that at least.