As the Pittsburgh Pirates complete their annual crawl to the bottom of the MLB standings, fans are fed up. Ben Cherington has shown no eye for acquiring and developing talent. Bob Nutting refuses to spend on the roster. The only real bright spot for Pirates fans has been Paul Skenes, who is quietly putting together one of the most dominant pitching campaigns of all time for a team with zero postseason hopes.
Skenes has thrust his name into the history books, posting a 2.13 ERA and 0.96 WHIP with 166 strikeouts in 148.0 innings pitched. He is the runaway favorite to win National League Cy Young and there's no reason to believe he can't turn around and do it again next season. But it all feels a little empty when the team around him simply is not built to contend.
Pittsburgh's 52-73 record, including a 7-9 record when Skenes starts, is proof enough that this team cannot contend. But dig a little deeper into the advanced metrics, and it becomes clear just how bad the Pirates are. It's a complete embarrassment for the organization to so willingly field a subpar team every season. At a certain point, Skenes is bound to get tired of the nonsense.
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Pirates' advanced stats show just how bad Paul Skenes has it
Pittsburgh's pitching staff is the roster's relative strong point. Even aside from Skenes, Mitch Keller has enjoyed a career-best season, Jared Jones has a bright future ahead of him, and the Bubba Chandler call-up in 2026 will change lives. Pittsburgh emptied out the bullpen a bit at the trade deadline, but the Pirates won't struggle to field a competitive rotation for as long as Skenes sticks around.
That almost does not matter with how bad the offense is. A gander at Pittsburgh's payroll reveals that one (1) position player is making north of $10 million this season. That player is Bryan Reynolds, whose OPS has plummeted to .701 in a career-worst campaign. Worse yet, there is absolutely zero genuine upside on the MLB roster, aside from Oneil Cruz (although mileage may vary for some folks...).
As FanGraphs reveals, not a single Pirates hitter has a wRC+ of 100 or greater this season — with 100 as the "league average" benchmark. Here is the textbook definition for wRC+, or Weighted Runs Created Plus, for the uninitiated.
"wRC+ is park and league-adjusted, allowing one to to compare players who played in different years, parks, and leagues. Want to know how Ted Williams compares with Albert Pujols in terms of offensive abilities? This is your statistic. wRC+ is the most comprehensive rate statistic used to measure hitting performance because it takes into account the varying weights of each offensive action and then adjusts them for the park and league context in which they took place."
Pirates won't compete until the lineup dramatically improves
Pittsburgh will no doubt hope for internal development to rectify this trend, rather than actually spending money on quality free agents or trade targets. Guys like 1B/C Rafael Flores (No. 8 prospect) might be ready to rumble next season. Nick Yorke (No. 13), who came over in the ill-fated Quinn Priester trade, has spent time with the MLB roster, but he serves more as a cautionary tale than as a source of optimism at this point.
Yorke's development has gone completely haywire since coming over to Pittsburgh. His swing has a new hitch and he looks as far as ever from meaningful MLB contributions. This is a long-gestating trend in Pittsburgh, too. This organization does not develop hitters with the same success rate as pitchers. Even SS Konnor Griffin, the No. 1 prospect in all of baseball, who feels like he might break the curse of wayward offensive development in Pittsburgh, is 19. He's at least a couple years away from offering Skenes and the Pirates' pitchers any sort of reprieve.
If Skenes were to demand a trade this winter, we'd all understand. Even frustrated Pirates fans couldn't really blame him. That almost certainly won't happen, but it's only a matter of time until Skenes is properly fed up.