Pittsburgh Pirates Rebuild - 2025 Midway Check-In

So before I dig in, a little background. My father was born in Latrobe, PA. A little town about an hour Southeast of Pittsburgh. So naturally he grew up being a Steelers and Pirates fan. He would tell me stories of Roberto Clemente, a man, in his eyes, the best to ever play the game. And it would be crazy to argue that AT LEAST he was one of the best to ever do it. .317/.359/.475/.834, 3000 hits, 240 HR and 1305 RBI, and a whooping 94.9 career WAR. And that's not even touching on the type of amazing person he was outside of baseball.

So while I'll never actively root against the Cubs if the Pirates are playing them, I will pull for them everywhere else. If my dad didn't let me choose to be a Cubs fan, I would be a Pirates fan, there's no doubt about it.

Which led us here. We're saving the Pirates. A team with just 3 playoff appearances since 1993 and just 4 winning seasons since then with zero division wins in that time frame as well.

I'm 81 games into the 2025 season, let's take a dive and see where we're at.

Detailed stats can be found in the Team Report: Pt.1, Pt.2

Finally it's worth mentioning I play every game, I was swapping between playing a series then simming the next for about the first 3 weeks of the season, but I like the ability to manage way too much.

Basics

81 games in, the 2025 Pittsburgh Pirates sit at 48-33, and are 1st in the NL Central.

While the team overall is struggling offensively, with no major category being better than 12th. We have used our overall great team speed to cash in on players on base more, ranking 5th in runs Scored in the league, and 1st in Stolen Bases and Base Running rating. Our pitching has also keep us competitive.

Transactions

There's no way around it, the Pirates need a lot of help. They are saddled with a lot of subpar talent and some crazy bad contracts to boot.

1. One of my first moves was extending Paul Skenes, I added another year to his contract to give me flexibility on what to do with him next year. Right now I've managed to get the Pirates in a pretty good spot, 15 over half way through, but if we crater and 2026 doesn't get any better Skenes might be going somewhere for a prospects package.

2. I picked up Pedro Avila in early April to help the backend of the rotation. He went 3-2 for a 4.39 with a 2:1 BB/K rate in 14 starts. He's currently on the AAA Indianapolis squad.

3. I also traded Catcher Joey Bart to the Pads and opted to go with the younger Henry Davis for my primary catcher. In return I got 3B Eguy Rosario and LHP Austin Krob. Eguy is taking the lions share of starts at 3B, while Krob has a 3.94 in Indianapolis.

   

4. On May 13th I made the decision to unload Ke'Bryan Hayes, who in 32 games was hitting just .248 with 0HR and 3RBI. The production was not meeting the contract and with Eguy taking most of the starts Ke'Bryan became extremely expendable due to him being pigeonholed at 3B. The Dodgers would send me LF Chris Newell and RHP Jose Rodriguez, more solid prospects as we try to rebuild the farm.

5. Long time Pirate Adam Frazier was DFA'ed, and released, he remains unsigned. The outfield room is over crowded with Reynolds/Suwinski/Palacios/Pham on the roster, and with out youth movement Frazier was the odd man out.

6. A rash of injuries to the backend of the rotation (I legit had 2 SP get injured in the SAME game) led me to sign SP Johan Oviedo and Evan Lee. One of the two will be the 5th man in the rotation when Jared Jones finishes his rehab assignment.

Youth Movement

As I mentioned I've really been focused on the Pirates youth movement. Of the 12 players getting the majority of the starts on the squad, 9 of them are 29 and younger.

Name	Age	Games	HR	RBI	AVG	OBS
Andrew McCutchen	38	79	10	36	.247	.753
Oneil Cruz	26	74	18	48	.211	.732
Jack Suwinski	26	72	11	41	.235	.750
Isiah Kiner-Falefa	30	72	1	38	.275	.651
Henry Davis	25	65	9	21	.212	.665
Nick Gonzales	26	59	4	29	.270	.732
Eguy Rosario	25	54	10	32	.224	.752
Jared Triolo	27	54	1	15	.232	.577
Josh Palacios	29	46	4	13	.279	.782
Spencer Horwitz	27	42	3	23	.264	.771
Bryan Reynolds	30	33	4	13	.244	.678

• Eguy Rosario has been a FANTASTIC offensive upgrade of Ke'Bryan thus far.

• Josh Palacios struggled early in the year but after a second call up he's been on fire. Batting .300 since May with 4 HR and 11 RBI. He had a OPS of 1.054 and OPS+ of 199 in May.

• Henry Davis currently is on pace for a worse offensive season than Joey Bart, but I'm taking the (hopefully) developmental upside here with him.

• Suwinski has been great too and I love IKF man, dude is hitting .353 in High Leverage with 21 RBI. May try to flip him for some prospects near the deadline as we also have a crowded infield too.

Pitching and Speed

Without a doubt the two strengths of this team. The team at the halfway point has 4 guys with 20+ SB, and 7 with 10+. With 182 total stolen bases, we are currently leading the league in stolen bases by 102 (Blue Jays are 2nd with 80.)

Name	SB	CS
Jack Suwinski	37	5
Oneil Cruz	29	8
Jared Triolo	25	4
Isiah Kiner-Falefa	20	6
Eguy Rosario	12	4
Josh Palacios	11	1
Nick Gonzales	10	6

So while we're overall struggling to reach base, when we do we often get into scoring position and cash in.

Pitching has also been great, specifically the starting rotation, despite the injury issues on the back end. Skenes has been Skenes, and we even got a no hitter from Mitch Keller. Bailey Falter has been the biggest surprise of the 1st half, pitching a 2.93 ERA and leading the staff with a 7-1 W/L record.

Name	W/L	ERA	IP	WHIP
Paul Skeen	7-4	2.81	109.0	1.03
Mitch Keller	4-5	4.32	100.0	1.20
Bailey Falter	7-1	2.93	89.0	1.31
Braxton Ashcraft	4-3	4.02	69.1	1.33
Pedro Avila	3-2	4.39	65.2	1.49
Johan Oviedo	0-0	2.57	7.0	2.00

Odds and Ends

• With the early success of the squad, I've taken the opportunity to raise ticket prices from $30.50 to $40.00, attendance has seen a boost by 43.1% with per game revenue up 24.0% from last season.

• PCA absolutely torched me the last series I had in Wrigley, 4 HR and 2 2B. He had 6 HR going into the series.

• Speaking of the Cubs, they are still employing Gage Workman, and are struggling offensively across the board. However Justin Steele is a Cy Young favorite. 9-2 with a 1.94 ERA and a 0.92 WHIP.

• Oneil Cruz is just as frustratingly inconsistant in OOTP as he is IRL.

• I have no idea what I'm doing with development and drafting, I need to hit the books before the draft hits in July.