3/25/2025 – Ethan Smith – @mvp_EtHaN
The 2025 Pittsburgh Pirates season is just about here, with anticipation building as to how this iteration of the North Shore ball club will stack up with the competition.
Bluntly, 2024 was a dud for Pittsburgh. The additions of Paul Skenes and Jared Jones sparked confidence in the Pirates starting rotation. Oneil Cruz finally got a full season of just playing baseball under his belt, with a position change added in. The kids tried to make themselves mainstays, some did, some didn’t, looking at you Henry Davis. Despite all that happened in 2024, one thing remained the same, the record, 76-86, which is looked on as an absolute failure when you consider Skenes and Cruz alone added 8.4 WAR on their own.
Its 2025 now, and many of you reading obviously know that and have probably firmly stuck 2024 in your rear view, but lets go back just one last time.
Ceilings and floors always devour the offseason chatter landscape, seeing as with a team like Pittsburgh, the offseason can drag when moves are spread out and not in abundance compared to a team like the Dodgers. The Pirates ceiling compared to their floor, respectively, are drastically far apart. This team could as easily win 86 games as easily as it could lose 86, again, and that’s a scary thought process, especially considering the club is entering year five of this thing with general manager Ben Cherington and manager Derek Shelton.
With this practice, let’s make one thing clear, the Pirates only “compare” to these two teams, the club is not an exact replica of either, just awfully comparable in numerous departments that make up a baseball team’s roster and funny enough, the two teams outside of Pittsburgh that will be discussed throughout this piece are awfully comparable in their own right, and had very, very different outcomes to their 2024 seasons.
All that said, let me explain myself.
The 2024 Floor Comp
When you hop on a cross country flight, things feel different when you leave the east coast and head out west, naturally of course with the time change and differentiating cultures within that exist in the United States.
Although different in many aspects, the Pirates and Seattle Mariners are damn near carbon copies of each other, and you’re probably already asking,”Wait, didn’t the Mariners win 85 games last year? How in the hell do they compare to the Pirates?!”, and you’d be right in your statement, seeing as calling this the “floor” for the 2025 Pirates would mean winning 85 games, but let’s look deeper.
The Mariners were a dominant starting pitching squad in 2024, sporting the league’s best ERA(3.49) as a team last year, headlined by Logan Gilbert and George Kirby, who had a FIP of 3.27 and 3.26 respectively, with each sporting a K/9 north of 8.4, sounds great right?
Add in Bryce Miller, and Bryan Woo, who each sported an ERA below 3.00 and became immediate mainstays in the Mariners rotation at just 25 and 24 years old. Luis Castillo, the supposed ace of the club entering 2024, hasn’t even been mentioned yet, and his season was impressive as well, sporting a 3.64 ERA and a 1.8 WAR.
That still doesn’t include young upstart Emerson Hancock, who should get plenty of opportunities in 2025 and should only add to what could be the best rotation in MLB by year’s end.
This should all sound rather familiar as a Pirates fan, seeing as the three-headed monster of Skenes, Jones and Mitch Keller spearheaded what was the best unit for the Buccos last season, the starting rotation. Like the Mariners, that appears to be the case again for Pittsburgh, even with the news that Jared Jones could miss extended time. Bubba Chandler, Thomas Harrington, Anthony Solometo, Mike Burrows and Johan Oviedo all have chances to make a real impact in this rotation THIS year, so the Pirates have plenty of forces ready to make the rotation a top-10 unit.
So, what was the Mariners biggest issue last season, leading to falling short of the postseason, despite an 85 win season? If you guessed the offense, well, let’s just say you hit it right on the nose.
The Pirates offense was putrid last year, as it has been for quite some time, slashing .234/.301/.371/.672 and ranking bottom-10 in baseball, pretty bad right?
Seattle, and to remind you all again, an 85-win club, slashed .224/.311/.376/.687 last season, with the batting average ranking 29th in MLB and the OPS ranking bottom-10 in MLB. For players that played 100-plus games with the Mariners last year, so this excludes trade acquisition Randy Arozarena, the Mariners had just three position players with an OPS north of .700, which is considered league average. Those players were Julio Rodriguez, Luke Raley and recently extended Cal Raleigh, all who were and will continue to be worthy contributors to the offense moving forward.
The rest was and still are question marks. Victor Robles is well, “fine”, Arozarena has a chance to stamp himself into Seattle with a full season, and the rest are below average. It ended up being the Achilles heel for the Mariners, who mind you also had a phenomenal bullpen with Andres Munoz, Trent Thorton and others, something the Pirates didn’t have.
Seattle enters 2025 with nearly the exact same question as Pittsburgh, “Can the offense take a step forward and help out the starting rotation?”, and for both teams, it could end up being the dagger to the heart of their seasons in 2025.
Yes, Seattle won 85 games, but even that win total may not be enough to make it to the postseason as a wild card team in a loaded National League this season, and comparing this 2025 Pirates team to the 2024 Mariners, outside of record, should make you wonder if the Pirates could end up in the same spot, missing the postseason despite well above average starting pitching due to a poor offense, but another team in the American League managed to overcome the same conundrum in 2024 and had one of its best seasons in a decade. You probably have a pretty good idea who.
The 2024 Ceiling Comp
One of the best stories of the 2024 playoffs was the Detroit Tigers, who snuck their way into the postseason with an 86-76 record and shocking many by putting three AL Central teams into the playoffs after the division was considered to be the worst division in baseball before the season began.
Detroit didn’t only make the playoffs, but they defeated the Houston Astros in the Wild Card round, taking down one of the best teams in baseball over the past decade. Detroit gave division rival Cleveland a run for their money as well in the ALDS, forcing five games against a Guardians squad that all but ran away with the division for a large part of 2024.
Now, losing in the ALDS stung for the Tigers, but it was their first postseason berth since 2014, ending a decade-long drought of postseason baseball.
Like Seattle, the Tigers clear strength was its starting pitching, ranking 3rd in MLB in ERA(3.61), just behind Seattle and Atlanta.
Tarik Skubal was the catalyst for the starting pitching staff, posting a 2.39 ERA and 228 strikeouts en route to winning the AL Cy Young Award in his fifth season with the Tigers. Jack Flaherty was strong before being traded at the deadline to the Dodgers and returned to the Tigers in 2025 free agency. Youngster Reese Olson showed strides, Casey Mize continues to grow, and Jackson Jobe has a legit shot to be a Rookie of the Year candidate this year.
Like Pittsburgh and Seattle though, the Tigers offense was below-average, sandwiched in between both slashing .224/.311/.376/.687, with the OPS ranking bottom-10 in baseball. Of the bottom-10 offenses in terms of OPS in 2024, Detroit was the only to make the postseason, so, unlike Seattle, the Tigers managed to find a way to get into the dance in October despite poor offensive production.
How does this all connect with Pittsburgh? Well, per FanGraphs, the Pirates offense is projected to have just two players projected to have an OPS north of .750, those being Bryan Reynolds and Oneil Cruz. Reynolds is who he is, which is a good thing, while Cruz has enormous offensive potential but questions remain about his consistency. The rest? Tons of questions.
As stated before, the 2024 Mariners and 2024 Tigers are a great floor and ceiling metric for this Pirates team, because, as expected, starting pitching appears to be the true outlier of this Pirates roster, and one would hope the offense can take much needed steps forward in an effort to competing for a NL Central title, its hard to say in confidence that the offense takes that step forward with what is available right now, but Detroit found a way, while Seattle did not.
Can the Pirates find a way, or are they staring another missed postseason in the face due to another below average offense?
Steel City Pirates 
Interesting concept with good comps, thanks. It’s likely to be a miss, however near, just as it would have been for Detroit if not for expanded playoffs the last several years. And the Bucs don’t have White Sox to beat down.
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