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Despite Ken Rosenthal's report that the Pirates want to be more aggressive this offseason, we know the Bucs will be thrifty. Where does the roster currently stand so we know what moves to look for?
The one thing the Pirates did well this season was pitch. The Bucs pitching staff finished 7th in the league in ERA, and 4th in WAR. Since Don Kelly took over as manager the Bucs were 4th in both metrics.
The Pirates are once again sitting on the couch during the MLB playoffs. The Pirates lost this year due to their lack of offense. No one will dispute that.
The Pirates went 59 and 65 under Don Kelly as Manager this year. That is a .476 win percentage which is a huge improvement over the win percentage under Derek Shelton this year which was .316.
The Pirates will likely end this season last in the majors in Runs Scored, home runs, slugging, and OPS. That means they have the worst results offensively, they are the worst at the best statistical indicator at scoring runs, the worst power, and they are last in the league at overall hitting.
The Pirates 40-Man roster is currently full. They still have at least two prospects, IMO 3 prospects, yet to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft. They also have 3 players coming off the 60-Day IL after the season concludes.
The Bucs have many players eligible for rule 5 draft this year. They can't protect them all, and don't need to. Who should they protect and who should they roll the dice on not getting drafted?
Dennis Santana and Johan Oviedo are Out of Minor League Options for 2026, and they are on the 40-man roster which if they stay on the 40-man they will need to make the 26-man roster out of spring training.
Joey Bart and Oneil Cruz are a couple of the players out of Minor League Options for 2026. However, they are not fringe roster players and the options do not matter so much at this point in their careers.
Despite Termarr Johnson's 0 for 5 game Thursday, he has had himself a solid August.
Termarr Johnson left Friday's game early after getting hit by the pitch on the hand. He was down for some time clearly in pain. The Bucs announced on Sunday that Konnor Griffin is being promoted to AA Altoona.
Jase Bowen was promoted to AAA Indy on August 6th. He played his first game yesterday in AAA and did not disappoint.
Konnor Griffin skyrocketed up the prospect ranking systems this season, eventually in July becoming the number one ranked prospect in baseball for Baseball America and MLB Pipeline. Also in July Griffin's OPS was .845 making July the worst month for Griffin offensively this year.
With the post trade deadline callups of Jared Triolo, Kyle Nicolas, Ryan Borucki, Dauri Moreta, and Johan Oviedo AAA Indy has only Colin Holderman, Darick Hall, Nick Solak, Alika Williams, and Ji Hwan Bae who has played enough to disqualify them as prospects.
In July the Pirates acquired 10 players via trade excluding Taylor Rogers because he was flipped. The Pirates surrendered 7 players in those trades again excluding Rogers.
Since Don Kelly's first game as manager on May 9th, the Pirates have had arguably the best pitching staff in the majors.
Pirates prospect Termarr Johnson had his first 3 hit game this season on Friday Night June 20.
The Pirates struggle offensively, obviously. They aren't going to buy runs and those runs probably are not coming from internal options in the near term.
Konnor Griffin continued his multiple game on base streak to 11 Friday night.
Greensboro won Konnor Griffin's debut 8 - 2 bringing their record to an outstanding 38 - 19.
In 2024 Nick Gonzales had an OPS of .707 and a wRC+ of 94. Both of these stats are just below league average in 2024. Where Nick Gonzales excelled was at being clutch.
After yesterday's 10-3 victory over the Miami Marlins at PNC Park the Pirates are 18-18 this year at home. That means their away record is atrocious.
After yesterday's 10-3 victory over the Miami Marlins at PNC Park Don Kelly is now 15-14 overall as the Pirates Skipper.
Since May 15 Nick Yorke has seen a surge in offense. During that time he has a batting average of .348 and an OPS of .827. He also has a whiff rate 23.7%
After yesterday's sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies Don Kelly is back to .500 as the Pirates manager. He has a record of 14 and 14 since taking over as Pirates manager.
At the time of this writing the Bucs are 12 and 14 under Don Kelly, and 24 and 40 overall. The bucs are also scoring more runs under Kelly.
The Pirates won last night giving bumping their record under Don Kelly to 12 and 14 which is a 46 win percentage. Of course the victory was another one run game.
The Pirates have improved under Don Kelly. They are still a frustrating team to watch, and need better bats and a better backend of the bullpen.
Last year the Bucs struggled mightily vs the curve, slider, and sinker. I thought Alex Verdugo would be a good fit here because he has success against all three.
The Pirates are a clear bottom 3 offense up to this point in the season. They are dead last in runs scored, tied for second least home runs, 23rd in the league in OBP, and next to last in slugging.
Alexander Canario's time with the Pirates has been short to this point. Shelton mostly played him as a weakside platoon option with Suwinski, and Pham was a clearly meant to be the everyday starter.
Under Andy Haines the Bucs were looking to make hard contact with hard swings while navigating an AB swinging in the hitters hot zones. Essentially Haines preached when you swing, make it count.
Endy Rodriguez is due to breakout in 2025. E-Rod is a great teammate, full of energy, talks to everyone, is a great interview, and a very athletic ballplayer.
The Bucs won their first spring training game of 2025 beating the Baltimore Orioles in 10 to 5 at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, Florida.
Yesterday we discussed who might make the Pirates regular lineup against LHP opening day. However, we didn't include what the order might be for said lineup.
The Pirates are almost finished adding this offseason. In fact Spring Training is here, so IMO the offseason is over. It seems like the Bucs lineup is complete against LHP unless they add an everyday player before Opening Day.
Dauri Moreta has been put on the 60 Day Injured List which was expected. Tommy Pham took the open spot on the 40-Man roster.
At the time of this writing the San Diego Padres are still above the 2025 MLB Luxury Tax Threshold of $241,000,000. The Friars Tax Payroll is estimated to be about $254,000,000 which is 14 million over.
The Red Sox just signed Alex Bregman to a three year 120 million dollar deal with half of that deferred. The signing has created a roster crunch for the Sox.
Erik Kratz, A.J. Perzynski, and Scott Braun from Foul Territory interviewed Pirates Beat Reporter Noah Hiles last week to preview the 2025 Pirates season.
The Bucs have a few players who are the best in the league at something. Paul Skenes had arguably the best SP rookie season in the modern area. Oneil Cruz is known for having some of the best bat speed. He actually had the highest average bat speed for a LHH. Ke'Bryan Hayes was on a run of his own, and hopefully he can get back on track this year.
Yesterday it was reported by DK that his sources inside the Pirates organization believe they have not made their main offseason move yet, and it will happen this spring likely by trade. It is fair to question what the Pirates consider a main move.
Termarr Johnson no doubt has a compact frame. Most listings I see have him at 5'7", but I've seen him listed as tall as 5'10"
Last week JJ Cooper and Mark Chiarelli on the Baseball America platform discussed the Pirates farm system. They started off mentioning the legit strength the Pirates have developing pitching, but also the lack of hitting development.
Former Pirates GM Neil Huntington was interviewed on the Foul Territory Podcast on back in January. Huntington was fired by Bob Nutting on October 28, 2019. Ben Cherington was hired as his replacement.
The Pirates lack power, and it doesn't seem like they are going to add externally to improve their power numbers. They are acquiring players who have low whiff rates and square up the ball like IKF, Spencer Horwitz, Tommy Pham, and Adam Frazier. I guess if you are not going to clear the bases you need to spray the ball often? I think the Bucs are hoping to Zag when most of the competitive teams are Zinging, but are they alone?
Nick Yorke was acquired by the Pittsburgh Pirates on July 29th last year from the Red Sox in exchange for Bucs SP Quinn Priester. Priester, a former top 100 prospect himself had trouble keeping the ball in the ballpark and surrendered too many hits. A change of scenery was needed.
The Bucs announced February 6th that they signed Tommy Pham to a 1-year $4.025MM deal with a chance for an additional $250K via incentives. I'm hearing Pham is expected to play the weakside platoon against LHPs. I still think they should consider carrying 14 position players on their 26-Man roster if they sign another LHH outfielder.
The Bucs recently inked a deal with Tommy Pham for $4.025 Million with incentives. Their 40-man roster is full so someone will need to be designated for assignment to make room for Pham.
The Bucs announced today that they have signed Tommy Pham to a 1-year $4.025MM deal with a chance for an additional $250K via incentives.
The Diamondbacks have re-signed Pirates free agent interest Randal Grichuk. The deal is reported with a base salary for 2025 of $2 million, with a mutual option for $5 million ($3 million buyout), making it a guaranteed $5 million plus $500K in incentives in 2025.
The Reds recently tried to acquire Luis Robert Jr. but did not meet the Chicago White Sox's demands. It is reported that the White Sox wanted two top 5 prospects from the Reds in exchange.
AI assisted articles is coming to postbucs. Most articles will be written only by humans, but we will incorporate articles with human ideas and partially AI explained hence AI assisted.
It has been reported that the Buccos have shown interest in free agent corner outfield Randal Grichuk. It is known the Pirates could use at least another platoon option in the outfield especially after letting Connor Joe and Bryan De La Cruz walk. Both of those players bat right-handed, and so does Randal.
If I give you a triple slash line .285/.312/.415 wRC+ 93 and .200/.319/.375 wRC+ 97 against LHP who do you think of? Maybe Oneil Cruz since he has a reputation of struggling against lefties? How about Ke'Bryan Hayes with his bad back? Maybe the Sophomore Nick Gonzalez is putting up barely lukewarm numbers against LHP? Maybe it is Connor Joe, and that is why the Pirates cut him? The first triple slash line against LHP in 2024 was Bryan Reynolds and the second one was Andrew McCutchen.
I'm in the same boat as seemingly everyone else when it comes to the Adam Frazier signing. It just doesn't seem to make sense. On Wednesday 1/29/25 the Pirates finalized their deal with the former Bucco Adam Frazier for $1.525 million.
ZIPs has released their WAR projections for all the NL Central teams. Let's create an all division team roster of 26 players with the highest ZIPs projected WAR, and see how many Pirates make the roster.
The Pirates 'Big Three' include Bryan Reynolds, Oneil Curz, and Spencer Horwitz. Just Kidding. The Big Three are of course Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller, and Jared Jones. The eye tells us they are a great trio, but how do they stack up to the rest of the NL Central.
MLB Pipeline and Baseball America has released their top 100 prospect lists, and the Pirates are represented around middle of the pack with 3 prospects on Baseball America's ranking and 4 prospects on MLB Pipelines Ranking.
The offseason is fast approaching spring training. Pitchers and catchers report to Bradenton February 12. The rest of the team report February 17. The first spring training game is February 22. The Pirates still haven't signed an everyday or platoon worthy corner outfielder. Given the Pirates self-imposed budget constraints one of the best fits is still available.
Spanning the 2023 and 2024 seasons the Pirates saw the 18th highest number of Pitches which is just below average. They were about league average coming in at 16th in walks, so you would think they would be around league average in OBP. Well, think again!
In the Pirates UI Developer Application Details article I shared my application answers for the UI Developer job posting and why they created the position in 2024. In 2023, I applied to be a research apprentice and received a response to complete a coding challenge. Due to unforeseen circumstances I was not able to start on the coding challenge, and I thereafter never heard back.
In the Communication is Key article I mentioned that I applied to the Pirate's front-end/ui developer job posting and didn't hear back. I was hoping to add some details of the application to that article, but I wasn't able to find my notes I saved from the application. I have since found them.
Ben Cherington cannot make the analytics department big enough. Since he was hired as the new GM back in 2019 he has been adding to the analytics team in several positions including: devops, researchers, developers, analysts, machine learning engineers, and apprentices. However, during the 2024 season a new position opened in that department, a front end developer.
Matt Hague and Ben Cherington know there is a flaw with the communication between the back office researchers and the hitters in the batters box. They are trying to fix that by telling stories.
Matt Hague is telling stories. His stories are a common data science strategy used to explain the data to stakeholders. Stakeholders this case are the hitters. The Matt Hague hiring seems to be the next step in the process to develop hitting in the Pirates Organization.
Welcome to Post Bucs! This blog is primarily focused on analysis of the Pittsburgh Pirates, rather than on reaction, recap, or predictions. Most of our articles will follow a sequence and evolve our analysis in an agile fashion.
