The Pittsburgh Pirates have missed the playoffs for the last nine seasons, leading the National League and only trailing the Los Angeles Angels.
Despite missing the playoffs in 2024, Pittsburgh showed flashes of potential. The Pirates’ pitching staff was excellent this season, with superstar Paul Skenes leading the way. Pittsburgh was in the playoff race through most of the season but floundered in August, going 8-19.
Bleacher Report’s Joel Reuter predicted what year every team who missed the playoffs this year would make it again and had the Pirates not making the playoffs again until the 2026 Major League Baseball season.
“With the dynamic young trio of Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller and Jared Jones set to anchor the starting rotation for the foreseeable future, the Pirates have a nice head start toward building a contending team,” Reuter writes.
“They need more than Bryan Reynolds and Oneil Cruz offensively, and given their spending limitations, it will fall to former top prospects such as Nick Gonzales, Henry Davis, Endy Rodriguez and others to at least partially solve that problem. They had a winning record into August (56-55 on Aug. 4), and the arrow is pointing up in Pittsburgh heading into 2025.”
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The Pirates offense needs major improvements around Cruz and Reynolds. They began the process at the trade deadline by adding Bryan De La Cruz, but they still need more to get out of the bottom of almost every major batting statistic. With how good their starting rotation is projected, Pittsburgh has a path to the playoffs soon if they can improve the offense.
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