5-2-25 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X
It’s been bad.
Ok, see you next month.
Yeah, you know me better than that right? Listen, I know it has been a terrible start, just like I knew the 20-8 start back in 2023 was by all conceivable ways to paint the picture, a legitimately great start.
Back then, I remember doing math, showing just how bad this team would have to be to fall all the way to an under .500 finish. Under 10% chance by the way.
And we all know how that finished, 76 wins. Had you bet on that, you have an adrenalin problem, but you’d have won a pretty penny.
Now I look at a 12-20 start and I see they’d have to win 58% of their remaining games to finish .500 or better.
Is it over? Well, it’s just as decided as the 20-8 start was to being a playoff lock.
Does that mean I see it happening? No, absolutely not. It’s impossible to see that as we sit here.
I could play the what if game. Say they reel off 8-10 in a row, well, the math significantly changes and from that point forward, you’re asking for .500 ball, instead of almost 60%. The thing is, you would have very much so achieved it, but winning 7 out of 10 for 4-5 weeks accomplishes the same thing, you just never get the instant gratification of that number looking more achievable.
The issue is, it’s impossible to look at this team and see it.
So here’s what I want to do today. I want to look at what they have, what they can change internally, and see if I can somehow see enough positive change to get better results in May.
First, we have to discuss the offense. It’s been an issue all year.
Overall, the Pirates offense has been brutal...
26th in team Batting Average .224
28th in HR with 24
23rd in Hits with 238
7th in Strike Outs with 276
27th in OPS with .642
Last half of April…
11th in team Batting Average .266
20th in HR with 11
14th in Hits with 110
19th in Strike Outs with 94
13th in OPS with .731
Now, I show these numbers for one simple reason, this team hit like complete and utter trash for the first half of April, and after that, it’s been largely league average.
The issue is, that second half of April is what we expected as a low water mark, not the up side of a huge down. Even so, improvement and largely with no injection of any upgrades.
How about if we just go by positional OPS and rank them against the league?
DH – 10th – .766
RF – 26th – .615
CF – 2nd – .893
LF – 30th – .387
3B – 19th – .609
SS – 23rd – .606
2B – 26th – .565
1B – 21st – .643
C – 15th – .729
Now, those are positional numbers. In other words, 1B shouldn’t make you pound your fist over Enmanuel Valdez (.758 OPS), but instead make you think about just how bad Endy Rodriguez was (.504 OPS). RF, is indicative of Reynolds, but he also was DH for quite some time, which makes that number not reflect what Cutch has done either. Feel me?
9 Positions, 2 top ten positional performances. Yeah, not good enough probably doesn’t cut it.
They will get some help back offensively and some of it we have actual MLB samples for. One of which is Spencer Horwitz, who last year posted an OPS of .790 which would place him 9th in MLB if he were to be capable of reproducing it.
Nick Gonzales had an OPS of .709 last year, so again if he is capable of replicating that it would be good for 14th in baseball.
That won’t raise their overall profile as a team all that dramatically, but it would take two of their worst positions and strengthen them significantly.
I won’t guess about other rookies, or prospects here other than to say, they have a few and we’ll very likely see them come up here and change the chemistry as the season plays out.
Whew. That’s the offense. Long story short, they were god awful, rebounded to league average and have a short term chance to return a couple players and maybe move up a spot or two amongst the league.
How about the vaunted pitching? If the Pirates were going to do anything this year, it was going to be driven by the starting pitching, cause be real, league average offense was the expectation given what they actually brought in, or more aptly didn’t.
Well, let’s start with the starters.
20th in ERA with a 4.32 mark
7th in IP with 173.0
7th in HRs with 17
25th in Runs with 90
24th in Earned Runs with 83
So I glean a few things from this. One, the ERA is anything but elite, they’re throwing more innings than most teams, pretty good at keeping the ball in the park and as much as it has looked like the defense was killing them, they weren’t nearly as nicked by it as I assumed with only 7 runs not earned given up.
Losing Jones hurt, but not so much that these numbers are acceptable for a unit that was supposed to be the main reason for winning and deep enough to sustain through injury.
The bullpen evolves so much via moving parts it’s really hard to judge this way. For instance, if I simply remove Holderman and Bednar, they’re a top 10 unit, if I add them back in, bottom 10. But the moving parts around them have been changed 7 or 8 times already. Still, they rank 18th for ERA at 4.09 which believe it or not is second best in the NL Central to the Reds (3.41) who just sent their closer Alexis Diaz to the minors.
They’ll get help here too, with Moreta returning and what looks like a resurgent David Bednar, but they still have shaky spots and moving Mlodzinski back to the pen will help a great deal.
So is the season over? Well, obviously not. Is the dream of a playoff season over? I mean, if you dared to dream it in the first place, I’d say it very likely is.
.500 is probably the most attainable goal left for this club with a chance to look like a much better team as the season plays out with help coming from the minors and the team waving goodbye to awful veteran additions.
This team has some things I feel are worth watching. IF you’re asking me why I stay plugged in aside from you know, my job.
- Oneil Cruz is breaking out, and starting to catch on in Center Field. Oneil becoming an unquestioned complete player is a huge and important story for this club, even if it doesn’t help them this year.
- The Starting Rotation developing throughout 2025 into something less conceptual in 2026. The Pirates need to force themselves to get the growing pains over with on a few guys this year, and it might not add up to winning now. This start makes it even less hard to achieve.
- Can they finally find traction with Nick Gonzales, Henry Davis, Liover Peguero, Endy Rodriguez, Nick Yorke, Billy Cook types? They have to have a win or two in here minimally, or we’ll be in the exact same position come offseason, relying on this team to go get what is missing en masse.
- Do they make a coaching change? The ultimate question being answered there is, do they think the players are capable but not being used properly or trained properly, or motivated properly? The hitch here is you don’t have to know the answer, you just have to be frustrated enough to do it and find out.
- This team has to avoid long losing streaks, and early on, they have, unfortunately they’ve also neglected to win 3 straight at any point. Can we go streaking? If we can’t, you have the answer to the headline.
I’m not trying to convince you this thing is headed in the right direction, but I am saying, they’ve already flipped the switch a bit from how they started to now. Overall, this team has to take a jump, and that won’t come playing Adam Frazier, IKF, Tommy Pham and Enmanuel Valdez 5-6 games a week. There isn’t a jump in there, just league average, IF they’re lucky.
I watch because I love the game, if I watched for chances to win it all, I’d have tuned in for 5 years of my 48 on this planet.
Steel City Pirates 