Pittsburgh Pirates Rebuild - 2025 3rd Quarter Check-In

We have officially moved through the 3rd Quarter of the 2025 MLB season, and ALOT has happened, call-ups, debuts, organizational overhaul, the MLB draft, the trade deadline and more all came. We're going to get into all of that. For starters, here's the Team Report through 121 Games.

Basics

The Pirates have maintained control of 1st place in the NL Central, with the Cardinals taking first here and there for a few days. The Cubs have been playing better baseball and are within striking distance to make it a 3 team race, and have snuck into the 3rd wild card slot.

The OOTP gods recognize the Brewers are a bad ballclub, I have no qualms with this.

Team stats ranks have seen a bit of a change, batting average(12th), OBP(12th), HR's(13th) and WAR(11th) have all seen a bit of a jump, while Runs against(3rd) and starter ERA(4th) has taken a bit of a dip.

Transactions

Oh boy do we have a lot of these.

1. While not player based transactions, shortly after the midway point check-in I did a MASSIVE organizational overhaul, firing just about every Manager, Pitching Coach, and Hitting Coach in the organization, and focused on hiring replacements that focus on improving the development of the players in each league, this, along with some trades put us massively in the red, but with the increase in ticket prices and sales, this wont be an issue in 2026.

   

2. LF Tommy Pham (43/43) and low level prospect CF Iverson Allen (20/20) was traded to the Seattle Mariners for 3 prospects: 1B Tyler Locklear (41/47), RHP Teddy McGraw (33/48), and 1B Connor Dykstra (20/34), continuing the "Youth Movement" theme.

3. July 30th, the day before the trade deadline saw 2 moves.

   1. C Jason Delay (39/39) was sent to the Miami Marlins for RHP Jesus Tinoco (46/46) and prospects SS Starlyn Caba (31/55) and RHP Luke Lashutka (31/43)

   2. Prospect LF Jase Bowen (37/43) to the Mariners for LHP Will Smith (38/38) and minor league CF Daniel Mateo (30/37). The Marines also sent $490,000 as part of the deal.

4. July 31st, Trade deadline!

   1. Sent minor leaguers RHP Bladimir Pichardo (22/31) and RHP Noah Takacs (29/32) to the Washington Nationals for RHP Michael Soroka (40/40) and 3B minor leaguer Cayden Wallace (38/49( The Nats also sent over $2,950,000.

   2. Sent minor leaguers LF Enmanuel Valdez (44/44) and LHP Dominic Perachi (38/42) for Closer Chris Martin (56/56) and minor leaguer RF Paulino Santana (20/46) along with $1,560,000.

   3. Finally in a rare player for player swap, we sent 1B Spencer Horowitz (51/52) to the Cleveland Guardians for 1B Kyle Manzardo (53/62) getting younger and more offensive upside out of 1B.

5. Both RHP Mike Burrows (45/45) and 2B Termarr Johnson (42/54) were called up to fill some holes in the MLB roster.

6. Michael Soroka was DFA'ed after just 1 start, a disastrous outing where he only went 4.2 inning allowing 6 runs.

Stats

Batting Stats through 121 games

Pitching Stats through 121 games

Batting Notes

• Eguy Rosario has continued to be a great offensive upgrade over Ke'Bryan Hayes. with a .744 OPS / 106 wRC+ / 108 OPS+. He is 3rd on the team in HR's (18) and RBI's (57) despite playing 15 less games or more than Oneil Cruz and Jack Suwinski.

• Henry Davis has been sweltering since our last check in. In 35 games since the midway point batting .327 while hitting 6 home runs, 17 RBI.

• Kyle Manzardo has been on a tear since coming to the Pirates. Recording hits in all but 2 of the 10 games he's played. Slashing .314/.415/.571 with a OPS of .986. Thusfar a huge offensive boon to the lineup.

Pitching Notes

• Paul Skenes is still dealing. 12-5 with a 2.71 178 K's to just 32 Walks, sporting a very clean 0.96 WHIP.

• Jared Jones' return to the rotation has been solid so far, going 3-1 with a 3.35 and a 1.02 WHIP. He made his return on 7/9 against the Royals, tossing 6 innings and allowing 2 runs while striking out 8 and issuing 1 walk.

• The Bailey Falter regression has hit, while being serviceable his ERA has gone north of 4 and has gone 2-5 in the time since last check in.

MLB Draft

I'll spare the details from the entire draft, instead giving you a run down of the top 5 picks for the organization.

Round	Position	Name	Overall	Potential
1	SP	Jamie Arnold	38	74
2	SP	CJ Gray	23	57
3	3B	Gavin Fien	20	56
4	1B	Tanner Thach	22	53
5	SP	Brett Crossland	24	59

Odds and Ends

• Oniel Cruz joined the 20/20 club on 7/12, with 4 more home runs he will be in the 30/30 club.

• Jack Suwinski followed on 8/11

• Eguy Rosario is just 2 HR and 5 SB away from joining.

• Josh Palacios needs just 8 HR to join as well.

• After starting the season with the 23rd best farm system. We have jumped up to 4th, loading up on prospects and a good draft really helped us out. We now have 5 prospects in the top 100. It's looking like we are primed to start climbing if they pan out.