Talking Baseball: Vol. 21

The first half of the 2025 Pittsburgh Pirates season has been another frustrating act.

We are going to start off here piggy-backing of an article I wrote at YardBarker this week, but the 2025 All-Star break should have been a time of celebration and excitement for the Pittsburgh Pirates. It very easily could have been.

Oneil Cruz, even though he did not win it, was one of the show-stealers at the home run derby, clobbering the longest home runs in the competition including a comically absurd 513-foot home run that was the longest Non-Coors Field derby home run of the StatCast era.

Paul Skenes started the game for the second year in a row (in just his second season), joining a short list of Hall of Famers (Rod Carew, Frank Robinson, Joe DiMaggio and Ichiro Suzuki) as the only players to ever start the game in each of their first two seasons. As he has done throughout the early portion of his career in the Major Leagues, he dominated his inning of work, striking out Gleyber Torres and Riley Greene before getting Aaron Judge to weakly ground out. He was throwing heat and again looking like the ace that he is.

Both of these guys were representing a team that, at the All-Star break, has allowed the fewest runs per game in the National League (3.91).

Let me repeat that: The team that is allowing the fewest runs per game in the National League going into the second half is the Pittsburgh Pirates.

They have one of the two best pitchers in baseball (and arguably THE best) and allow fewer runs than anybody in the league …. and they are 19 games under .500 with one of the worst records in the league, not even close to a playoff spot or playoff contention. They are not even close despite it being easier to compete for a playoff spot in baseball than it has ever been in the history of the sport. There are only nine teams at the break that are more than five games out of a playoff spot. There are only eight teams more than six games out.

The Pirates, for all of their pitching success, are 13 games out. It’s staggering. And instead of Pirates fans being able to celebrate having a true superstar and having two players shine at the mid-summer event …. all anybody could talk about was how bad the team, how hopeless the team is and how the best pitcher in the league starting the All-Star game — again — has a 4-8 record.

At least that should have been the talk, because it is absolutely the story with this team.

Especially when it’s not likely to get any better anytime soon.

First, just look at the top-11 teams in terms of run prevention in the National League, and then look at their winning percentage.

The Pirates are the only team in the top-five with a losing record.

There is only one other team in the top-10 (Atlanta) with a losing record.

The combined winning percentage of the non-Pirates teams in the top-10 is .542, while all but one of them (Atlanta) is in serious playoff contention.

The combined winning percentage of the non-Pirates teams in the top-five is .566, with all of them in playoff contention and likely on their way to making the playoffs.

The Pirates, at the top of both lists, are at .402.

Pitching and defense is supposed to be the recipe for winning. For every other team with good pitching, it is.

It’s all a staggering failure by ownership to not spend enough money and the baseball ops people to spend what money it does spend poorly, while also failing to acquire or develop any sort of capable Major League bat.

Who is the best position player that Ben Cherington has acquired in six years? Joey Bart? Isiah Kiner-Falefa? It’s brutal, and there is almost no help on the way in the upper levels of the farm system. Which brings me to the main point of just how far away this team is from contending.

Let’s talk about that, and also some second-half Major League Baseball talking points.