Pirates Morning Report: The Pirates Offensive Woes

Anyone who follows the Pirates, even casually, knows that the Pirate offense has been bad this year. If you take a deep dive in, it is even worse than you could imagine. This team’s problems on offense run throughout the team. The Pirates were not good offensively in 2023 and 2024. In 2025, they have dropped off the face of the earth. They are the worst in baseball in runs scored, home runs, slugging, OPS, and total bases. They are between 26th and 29th in hits, doubles, batting average, OBP, leaving the most men on base, grounding into double plays, and OPS+. They have the 7th highest number of strikeouts. Believe it or not, they do have a few stats in the top half of the league. They are 11th in walks. That stat, to me, is mind-blowing. Why would you ever walk these guys? They are 15th in stolen bases with a league-average 77% success rate. That is amazing also since they don’t get on base that often. They are 12th in the league in triples. In practically all the hitting stats, the Pirates are in the bottom 5 of the league. That is after they scored 11 runs on Sunday.

Almost every player who played for the Pirates last year has sunk to new lows when it comes to hitting. OPS is calculated by adding a player’s on-base percentage and his slugging percentage. It gives an overall view of how a player is batting. There were only 2 Pirates whose OPS improved this year, and one of those should not count. Jared Triolo went from .611 in 2024 to .688 in 2025. League average is .720. Our most improved batter is 32 points below league average. The other “improved” hitter is Henry Davis. He went from .453 in 2024 to .500 so far in 2025. He just went from being very pathetic to just pathetic. Here is how far each Pirate has dropped in his OPS so far this year when compared with 2024. There were some that you thought could not get any worse but managed to do so. Bryan Reynolds -72, Oneil Cruz -91, Nick Gonzales -32, Ke’Bryan Hayes -29, Andrew McCutchen -31, and Joey Bart -91 have all had significant drops in their hitting. Special mention goes to Jack Suwinski, who dropped from .588 to .508. There have been 388 players that have had over 150 plate appearances this year. Henry Davis is ranked 387th in OPS. Jack Suwinski is 383rd. Do you think something is wrong here? I would not play either player in these last 6 games to avoid them getting worse.

Will anybody be held accountable for this mess? To me, it is highly unlikely. Will heads roll at the end of the season? Who knows? These are the facts, Jack. The Pirates were shut out 16 times this year. Nineteen times they scored 1 run. Thirty-two times they scored 2 runs. Sixty-seven games they scored 2 runs or less. That is over 40% of the season. This team has been in last place since April 24th. Tell me who deserves to keep their job. Please, someone make the case. I am dying to see it.