The Pirates Are Playing Their Best Baseball of the Year—and Running Out of Bodies to Sustain It
There is a version of this Pittsburgh Pirates season that looks, right now, like the beginning of something. The offense has scored 6.3 runs per game over the last ten games, up from 5.0 in the prior twenty-game stretch. The pitching and defense have allowed just 4.0 runs per game in that same window, down sharply from 6.0 per game before it. That is not a rounding error. That is a two-run swing on both sides of the ball simultaneously, the kind of convergence that turns fringe contenders into October noise-makers. The Pirates are 3.5 games out of the last wild card with 67 games left. The math is still alive.
Here is my declaration: Pittsburgh makes the postseason if it can keep seven players off the injured list long enough to let this surge mean something. That is not a hedge on the thesis — it is the thesis. The surge is real. The window is now. And the injury report is the only thing standing between this team and a legitimate October conversation.
The names on that list are not depth pieces. Oneil Cruz, the center fielder posting an .826 OPS with 15 home runs in 66 games, is on the 10-day IL. Spencer Horwitz, the first baseman who anchors the top of the depth chart at his position, is also on the 10-day IL. Endy Rodríguez, who has drawn walks at a remarkable clip this season with a .414 on-base percentage, is shelved too. Konnor Griffin, the team's starting shortstop, is on the 60-day IL with a finger injury that will keep him out well past any reasonable return date. That is your center fielder, your first baseman, your DH, and your shortstop — four of the lineup's most productive contributors — all unavailable at the exact moment the offense decided to wake up.
The pitching picture is only marginally better. Braxton Ashcraft has been the team's best starter, a genuine breakout at 10-3 with a 3.40 ERA and over ten strikeouts per nine innings. Paul Skenes, the arm this franchise has been building toward, is throwing with a 3.61 ERA and an elite 1.03 WHIP. Those two are healthy and they are legitimate. But Mitch Keller is laboring at a 5.53 ERA, Bubba Chandler is 3-8, and the bullpen depth has been carved up by the IL — Evan Sisk and Wilber Dotel both out, Chris Devenski on the 60-day. The front of the rotation is a genuine asset; behind it, the margin for error has nearly vanished.
History is not kind to teams that try to make a wild card run while cycling through a seven-man injury report. Think of the 2013 Pirates, who finally ended their two-decade playoff drought — that team was healthy, cohesive, and rode a dominant bullpen through the stretch. The teams that survive injury crises in a pennant race do so because their replacements can hold the line, not because their stars miraculously return. Pittsburgh's depth has shown flashes — Ryan O'Hearn set a franchise record with a ten-RBI game against the Braves earlier this month, and the team just acquired Robert Hassell III from Washington to add outfield depth — but flashes and a franchise RBI record do not make a rotation whole or put Cruz back in center field.
The trade deadline is the pressure valve here. My read is that this front office faces a genuine fork: if you believe the surge is structural and not a two-week mirage, you spend assets to patch the holes and push. The acquisition of Hassell III suggests at least some appetite for buying. But a one-time top prospect acquired for cash or a player to be named later is a low-cost flier, not a statement of intent. The question is whether Pittsburgh has the conviction — and the organizational capital — to make the kind of move that actually moves the needle on a wild card race with 67 games left.
The Pirates are playing their best baseball of the season at precisely the moment they can least afford to lose another body. That is either a cruel irony or a clarifying one. I believe it is clarifying. This team has the pitching anchors and the offensive upside to be dangerous in October. But dangerous in October requires getting there first, and getting there first requires that the injury report stops growing before the surge stops being real. The window is open. The question is whether Pittsburgh is willing to climb through it.