Grading the 2026 Pittsburgh Pirates at Midseason
The Pittsburgh Pirates upgraded their offense this season at the expense of their defense and bullpen.
The Pittsburgh Pirates have the third best offense in baseball.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees are the only two teams with more offensive run value.
One year ago, the Yankees had the best offense, and the Dodgers ranked third. The Pirates were 29th overall.
Jumping from one of the worst offenses in baseball to one of the best is a significant accomplishment.
How the Pirates got here is a mixture of a great offseason and internal improvements.
The Upgrades
Brandon Lowe was acquired via trade and Ryan O’Hearn was signed as a free agent to provide the offseason support. The Pirates also signed Marcell Ozuna, which hasn’t worked out.
Lowe is having one of the best seasons for a second baseman in Pirates history. His next home run will tie Neil Walker for the most home runs by a second baseman in franchise history. It’s not even the All-Star Break. A free agent at the end of the season, Lowe is having a classic contract year, putting up some of the best numbers of his career.
O’Hearn homered twice on Sunday, giving him 13 on the season. His career high was 17 homers last season. He’s also on pace to match his career-best results in wRC+ and wOBA, also set last season.
Both of those additions have done exactly what the Pirates hoped they’d do, and more. That might have helped the existing players take a step forward with more support.
Bryan Reynolds leads the offense this season, after a down year last year. He has 19.4 offensive runs this season, compared to -0.1 in 2025. His step forward has been a bigger boost than the additions of Lowe or O’Hearn.
Oneil Cruz has also stepped up. His 11.1 offensive runs is an increase over last season’s -3.5 offensive value.
Spencer Horwitz was one of few players who was productive last year, with an 8.9 offensive value. He’s at 10.6 this year, maintaining the rare production the Pirates saw in 2025.
Both Cruz and Horwitz are currently on the injured list. The Pirates have still maintained positive offensive production, in part due to their depth beyond the biggest names.
Konnor Griffin, Endy Rodriguez, Tyler Callahan, Nick Gonzales, Esmerlyn Valdez, and Jake Mangum have also been positive contributors on offense. Griffin and Valdez have provided help from the minor league system, while Callahan and Mangum were offseason additions, with Mangum arriving in the Lowe trade.
The Downgrades
For as good as the offense has been, the Pirates have seen a massive downgrade in two other areas of the team.
The team’s defense ranked 8th in the Majors last year. It’s currently 25th in the Majors in 2026.
Losing Gold Glove third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes was the biggest negative impact. Nick Gonzales has shown some positive defensive value at third base, but nowhere near the value of Hayes.
The lack of offense from Hayes was a problem, and the Pirates shed a lot of future payroll commitments by dealing him away. Gonzales currently has a 1.2 fWAR, which is better than the 0.8 Hayes put up last year before the deadline. It’s not that the Pirates were wrong in moving Hayes. They just sacrificed defense for offense.
Konnor Griffin has produced negative defensive value at shortstop, compared to Isiah Kiner-Falefa putting up positive value last season. Like Gonzales/Hayes, the added offense from Griffin has offset the defensive loss. Griffin has a 1.2 WAR compared to 0.8 from Kiner-Falefa. The Pirates again sacrificed defense for offense.
The Pirates didn’t have a great outfield defense last season, and they’ve somehow gotten worse this year. Again, the tradeoff is an improvement on offense. Reynolds and Cruz have improved their hitting, while O’Hearn is playing out of position in right field as he boosts the offense.
The Pirates upgraded their offense, but that came at a cost to their defense.
That has also impacted the pitching, as you’d expect with a downgrade to the left side of the infield.
Last year, the Pirates had the third best pitching staff, per FIP. That’s Fielding Independent Pitching, which means the results weren’t impacted by the positive defense from Hayes and Kiner-Falefa.
Those two did help to ensure Pirates pitchers had the 7th best ERA, matching their actual results to expected results.
This year, the Pirates have a 3.88 FIP, which ranks sixth in the Majors. Again, that number doesn’t factor in the decline on the left side, or the outfield defense. The team ERA is 4.15, which ranks 15th overall.
As a whole, the pitching staff has gone from top-five expected and top-ten results to top-ten expected and middle-of-the-pack results.
Last year’s starting rotation led the way, with the sixth best ERA and sixth best FIP. This year’s starting ERA ranks ninth in the Majors, while the FIP ranks third. That’s one of the obvious areas where the defense has hurt the most. The rotation is arguably better this year, but performing worse than last year.
The bullpen was good last year, with the seventh best FIP and the 13th best ERA. At worst, they were middle of the pack, ranking 15th in Win Probability Added. They did have the fifth-best WPA/Leverage Index, ranking situational wins.
As for this year’s bullpen, the story has been much different.
The Pirates’ relief group ranks 17th in FIP and 20th in ERA. Unlike the rotation, this isn’t a case where the defense is lowering the expected results.
This is just a bad group.
The WPA of the 2026 bullpen ranks 21st, while the WPA/LI ranks 14th.
Gregory Soto was added to the bullpen over the offseason, and he hasn’t been bad. He’s not a closer, which is the role he’s been used in due to being the only reliable reliever. Evan Sisk, added at last year’s deadline, has been the second best reliever. The third player in the Lowe deal, Mason Montgomery, is one of the few relievers who projects for more than 0.5 WAR this year.
The 2025 group was led by David Bednar, who was traded at the deadline. The Pirates also had a 1.0 WAR from Dennis Santana, who has fallen off this year, and Carmen Mlodzinski, who is currently being used in a long relief role instead of in leverage situations.
Caleb Ferguson, Isaac Mattson, and Justin Lawrence were the only other relievers last year with 0.5 WAR or more. Mattson is maintaining that pace this year. Lawrence fell off and was let go earlier this season. Ferguson was traded last year for A-ball pitcher Jeter Martinez.
Breaking Down the Broken Bullpen
It’s easy to see what went wrong with the bullpen.
The Pirates traded Bednar with the idea that Santana could replace him as the closer, and Soto could provide help as an established late inning reliever.
Braxton Ashcraft and Mlodzinski were two of the best relievers in 2025, and were both moved to the rotation this season. Mlodzinski has since been moved back to a long relief role, which doesn’t help the Pirates in leverage situations.
The bullpen lost a lot of good contributors, and Santana’s decline in the closer role has further hurt the plan heading into the season.
The worst move might have been dealing Bednar. This bullpen would look a lot different if Soto was added to help Santana set up Bednar, instead of Santana providing a cheaper, unproven closer replacement. With the Yankees, Bednar has a 3.09 ERA and a 2.68 FIP in 35 innings, along with 16 saves in 18 chances.
In return for Bednar, the Pirates received Rafael Flores Jr., Edgleen Perez, and Brian Sanchez.
Flores had a positive result in a very brief appearance in the Majors this year. He’s mostly struggled to hit for power in Triple-A, with a .668 OPS. That’s a problem, since he was a poor defensive catcher whose value was his power potential. Perez shows some promise with his hitting potential in Low-A, with a .296 average and a .397 OPS. He hasn’t been hitting for power, ranking 6th or lower on the Bradenton roster in Average Exit Velocity, Hard Hit rate, and Barrel rate. Sanchez has a .670 OPS in Greensboro, which is heavily boosted by his results in the hitter-friendly park.
It would be difficult to imagine the Pirates getting anything of value long-term from the Bednar trade. Most of their return went to Flores, who seemed like excess for an organization that had Joey Bart, Henry Davis, and Endy Rodriguez as upper-level catching options going forward.
The trade will likely be remembered as the Pirates salary dumping their established hometown closer ahead of their attempts to finally try to compete at the Major League level.
Payroll Shuffling
The Pirates have gotten praise for upgrading their offense.
They got praise for the offseason spending that led to those offseason upgrades.
I don’t think praise is warranted in either case.
On that same note, I don’t think they deserve criticism for the defensive downgrades or the bullpen struggles.
Once you start assigning praise for team upgrades, you need to also assign criticism for the downgrades. Eventually, you get to a point where the only thing that matters is the overall result.
The Pirates are currently 42-42, with a +28 run differential. They’re fourth in the NL Central, and 2.5 games out of the Wild Card race, with six teams ahead of them.
At the end of the season, the final results will determine where the Pirates went right and where they went wrong. The offensive upgrades might end up offsetting the defense and bullpen downgrades. The defense and bullpen might be the undoing of the team. Perhaps they address their needs at the deadline to impact the final results.
One thing that can be determined is how they managed their resources heading into the season.
The Pirates entered the season with the 22nd ranked payroll. They opened the 2025 season 26th overall. The total increase was around $15 million. Despite the narrative that they finally spent this offseason, the more accurate assessment is that they finally raised a ridiculously low bar.
A lot of the offseason spending was funded by the salary dumps at last year’s deadline. Bednar and Hayes combined to make $16 million this year. Bailey Falter would have added $3.6 million this year. It’s definitely not a bad move that they dealt Falter, as that trade brought back Sisk, one of their better relievers. Those three moves cut nearly $20 million in potential salaries for this season.
They were paying $7.5 million to Kiner-Falefa last year. Andrew McCutchen and Tommy Pham weren’t brought back, after making a combined $9 million. Added to the salaries above, the Pirates trimmed over $36 million before adding anyone new to the roster.
So, when they spent $36 million in 2026 on Lowe, O’Hearn, and Ozuna, that was just one large trade in salary. The actual spending increase amounted to Soto, smaller depth additions like Jose Urquidy, and internal salary raises.
This isn’t a team that increased spending by any significant amount. They merely restructured their spending, and in doing so, they went heavy on improving the offense, while taking away a lot from the defense and bullpen.
The Ozuna Mistake
I already mentioned the Bednar trade looks bad. It looks worse when paired with the Ozuna signing.
The Pirates dealt Bednar, instead of keeping a reliever who could have made close to $10 million. They got back a catcher who is more a first base/DH type in Flores. Then, with the money they could have used on Bednar, they signed Ozuna for $12 million guaranteed. This move seemed like excess at the time.
Ozuna joined the club when they already had O’Hearn joining Horwitz as first base/DH options. The move almost seemed performative at the time, with Ozuna’s signing offering justification for moving on from McCutchen.
The signing of Ozuna was a horrible misallocation of limited resources.
O’Hearn was added in late December. The Pirates waited nearly six weeks until right before Spring Training began to spend the last of their money on Ozuna. They could have focused that money on the bullpen, while relying upon guys like Flores, Jhostynxon Garcia, and other upper-level minor league additions over the last year for additional offensive depth beyond Lowe/O’Hearn.
The period after O’Hearn signed was filled with missed signings. The Pirates were linked to Kazuma Okamoto, who signed with Toronto on January 3rd. Then, they were linked to Eugenio Suarez, who signed with the Reds on February 1st.
Before signing Ozuna, the Pirates were targeting another offensive upgrade. The theme was help at third base, which would have made sense considering the trade of Hayes creating a hole. When they shifted to Ozuna, that made less sense, as it only crowded their 1B/DH situation.
While the Pirates have absolutely upgraded their offense, the overall team building strategy left a lot of questions.
They possibly went to an excessive level with trying to upgrade the offense, to the point where they likely took away too much from the defense and bullpen.
The Lack of Development
I think the biggest issue comes from the development system.
The Pirates were tanking for half a decade, and the entire stated focus of this front office since late 2019 was improving the minor league development system.
They’ve picked inside the top ten in all six drafts General Manager Ben Cherington has overseen, while having one of the highest international budgets. The early years of Cherington’s tenure revolved around a rebuild that has produced abysmal results. The saving grace might be Endy Rodriguez, who was added in the Joe Musgrove trade.
Relievers are the most basic thing a minor league system can produce. The Pirates have rotations at the top two levels that are made up of fringe-prospects and minor league veterans. They didn’t enter the season with an excess of starting options pushing quality arms to the bullpen.
Wilber Dotel has been the best bullpen depth story this season. He’s currently on the injured list, but went from starting in Triple-A to putting up a 5.89 ERA in 18.1 innings in the Majors, with a few good outings in the mix.
Development success in the bullpen has been seen in Pittsburgh over the last decade. The last time the Pirates were winners, it was in part due to bullpen help from converted minor league starters like Tony Watson, Jared Hughes, and Justin Wilson. At best, the current team has produced a Brandon Cumpton equivalent in Dotel.
The only two highlights to emerge are Ashcraft and Mlodzinski. After their success in the bullpen, both were needed in the rotation, due to a lack of starting depth. That’s more a problem with Mlodzinski, who is still being maintained as a long reliever, possibly to preserve starting depth.
The bullpen depth in Triple-A has been tested, and isn’t providing any answers. That shouldn’t happen after seven years of building the minor league system to this point. Dotel shouldn’t be a highlight. He should be an example of normal depth, and the Pirates should have at least one long-term reliever emerging by this point.
While the Pirates upgraded their offense, they downgraded the defense and bullpen. The defensive downgrade was a series of choices to go offense over defense across the field. The bullpen downgrade was made worse by the fact this development system isn’t producing any help.
When it comes down to the final results this season, if the Pirates don’t end up with a winning record, it won’t be solely due to the trades of defense/bullpen for offense.
It will be a reflection of a larger failure to develop any kind of pitching depth in the minors across a seven-year rebuild.
And if they manage to make the post-season, I think a lot of attention will need to be paid to the change in approach the team made this year.
Until the next time I go live…
-Tim Williams