I Left, and Somehow Nothing Happened

6 months ago, I wrote my last article. It came at the end of the Pirates 2025 season. Surely I don’t need to remind anyone that they finished with a record of 71-91, but I just did. And now here we are. The roster has changed a decent amount since then and the team definitely appears to be better than the one from 2025, at least on paper. So… if they are better, why are they still just hovering around the .500 mark 30% of the way through the 2026 season? It almost seems as if not much truly happened even though it did.

The Pirates brought in the likes of Brandon Lowe, Ryan O’Hearn, and Marcell Ozuna on the offensive side. Lowe and O’Hearn have panned out so far. Ozuna? Not so much. They’ve called up Konnor Griffin and now Jhostynxon Garcia. Griffin has gotten better as time has gone on and Garcia just got here. Skenes and Keller have been their usual selves. Ashcraft has looked solid. Chandler and Mlodzinski have left a lot to be desired. The bullpen? Yikes. They brought in Gregory Soto and Mason Montgomery, but it isn’t any better than it was at any point last season. It might even be worse based on a recent sampling of their games. And now here we are, the Pirates are 24-24 and on a 4 game losing streak, their 2nd such streak so far this season (the first one was 5 games and ended on May 1st). So what has actually changed?

Ben Cherington has once again found himself with a weak bullpen. The offense is much better and the starting pitching has mostly been there. Based on those 2 things alone, you’d think the Pirates might sit at least a few games above .500 and counting. Unfortunately, we exist in reality and that reality includes a team whose bullpen has imploded game after game. Last season, the Pirates tied for 9th in MLB with 26 blown saves. They already have 12 blown saves so far in 2026, tying them for the league lead in this unfortunate stat. Did I mention we are only about 1/3 of the way through the season?

Just last week in the first game of the series with the Phillies, the Pirates were up 6-0 after 2 innings and 8-3 going into the 7th. Over the next 3 innings the bullpen would surrender 5 runs to tie the game up, and they would go on to give up 3 more in the 10th to lose 11-9. That’s a game you should win if your team is truly good.

Fast forward to yesterday’s game with the Cardinals to open the series, the Pirates were up 4-3 going into the 6th. The recently more reliable Evan Sisk comes in and immediately serves up a HR to give the Cardinals a 5-4 lead. The Pirates would tie it in the 9th before… losing again in extra innings.

This was another winnable game the Pirates ended up losing, and you can add it to a fairly lengthy list of winnable games they’ve lost so far this season. So while the pieces have changed and the offense is better, why does it still feel like nothing has happened?