The Pittsburgh Pirates need to add to their offense this offseason.
The Pirates ended the season 76-86, led by their starting rotation. Aside from Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds, Pittsburgh needs offensive threats in the lineup. Improving their lineup will likely come from signing or trading for hitters in the offseason.
Pittsburgh doesn’t have many prospects they can turn to in their farm system to improve the offense, according to MLB.com’s Alex Stumpf.
“The Pirates don’t have many bats they can turn to next year that haven’t already made the Majors,” Stumpf wrote. “That’s a problem for a team that finished 24th in MLB in runs (665) and 27th in OPS (.672). General manager Ben Cherington has hinted that the team could use its pitching depth as trade pieces for hitters, but the Bucs also need to produce and grow those young bats, too. It’s an unbalanced farm system at the moment, and the hitters are going to need to break out to fix it.”
“Pittsburgh needs hitters, too. The Pirates have just four in their Top 30 Prospects list who finished with Double-A Altoona or higher (Cook, No. 3 prospect Termarr Johnson — who’s ranked No. 75 overall — No. 6 Nick Yorke and No. 18 Tsung-Che Cheng). Yorke and Cook are newcomers to the system, having been acquired at the Trade Deadline.”
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The Pirates’ starting rotation is in great shape, and they have many pitching prospects in their farm system. However, it’s unclear if they will make a deal with one of their prospects to add a bat to the middle of the lineup for next season. Either way, Pittsburgh is trending in the right direction, and adding another hitter will only improve them.
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