The Pittsburgh Pirates are mired in the midst of yet another losing season, entering play on Tuesday last by a mile in the NL Central at 38-54. And it's not hard to figure out why: This team simply cannot score runs.
In fact, the Pirates are currently tied with the Chicago White Sox for the worst team OPS in baseball at .641. And really, that might be underselling their futility: The third-worst team, the Cleveland Guardians, are closer to the San Francisco Giants in 24th than they are to the Pirates and White Sox in 30th. Pittsburgh can't get on base, they can't hit for power, heck, they can't do much of anything at the plate.
The pitching, by contrast, has started to come together. Anchored by Paul Skenes, the Pirates have the seventh-best starter's ERA in the Majors in 2025. And with Jared Jones set to return next season, plus two top-100 prospects in Bubba Chandler and Hunter Zarco lurking in Triple-A, this rotation is set up to make some serious noise in the immediate future. Get some offense to go with it, and Pittsburgh might finally be in business.
But of course, these are the Pirates we're talking about; nothing can ever be that simple. With the 2025 MLB Draft just days away now and Pittsburgh set to pick No. 6 overall, this would be a perfect opportunity to nab a quick-moving bat. Unfortunately, the latest chatter has the Pirates linked to ... another pitcher, and a particularly risky one at that.
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Seth Hernandez would be a costly mistake for the Pirates in the MLB Draft
In Baseball America's latest mock draft, the Pirates are projected to select righty Seth Hernandez out of Corona High School in California. Hernandez is almost universally regarded as the best prep pitcher in his class, a two-way star who could also be drafted as a third baseman if he didn't have such an electric right arm. He's an excellent athlete, he looks the part at 6-foot-4 and 190 pounds and his fastball/changeup combination is advanced for his age.
Still: This would be a dramatic miscalculation for Pittsburgh in this spot. For starters, there's a reason why a high-school righty has never been taken with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft; it's arguably the riskiest demographic in baseball scouting, one littered with high-profile busts and all too few success stories. Maybe Hernandez will be the exception to that rule; he certainly has the makeup and physical tools to pull it off. But if he does, he'll be defying years of hard-won experience — and that's before we even get to why this is such a confusing fit for the Pirates.
This team is on a compressed timeline. Skenes is already swatting away trade speculation, and he'll have only four more years of team control by the time 2025 is up. That means that, even being as aggressive as possible, Hernandez likely won't break into the Majors until Skenes has either signed an extension or, more likely, been dealt away. This team is in need of more immediate solutions befitting the talent they have in their rotation, and those solutions have to come at the plate rather than on the mound.
If any team screams college bat in this draft, it should be the Pirates. Just get a high-floor, low-ceiling prospect like outfielder Ike Irish, someone who stands a good chance of being a productive big-league hitter within the next 18-24 months. If not, then Pittsburgh will be doomed to repeat the same cycle all over again next year, and the year after that, letting Skenes, Jones, Chandler and the rest go to waste due to an inability to put a functional offense around them.