The story of the 2025 Pittsburgh Pirates is a relentless chorus of “what ifs.” What if key players hadn’t gotten hurt? What if off-season acquisitions had performed from day one? These questions are often framed as a tale of bad luck, a tragic series of unfortunate events.
This is a comforting lie. The truth is far more damning. The endless stream of “what ifs” is not a sign of misfortune. It is a direct and predictable indictment of a front office strategy that constructed a roster with absolutely no margin for error. This team was built to fail.
A Flawed Foundation
The strategy heading into the season was built on hope, not certainty. For a team starved for power, General Manager Ben Cherington’s solution was to acquire the likes Tommy Pham and Adam Frazier, and trade for Spencer Horwitz. These moves were predicated on a massive gamble that the unproven, internal options would finally blossom into legitimate offensive threats.
The front office was asking “What if Jack Suwinski, Jared Triolo, and Ji-Hwan Bae finally start hitting?” This was not a reasonable question. When none of them delivered, the foundation crumbled. There was no Plan B.
The Inevitable Collapse
A well-built roster can absorb injuries and slumps. This roster, built on hope, shattered at the first sign of adversity.
The collapse began with the Spencer Horwitz domino effect. The question was never just “What if Horwitz is the answer at first base?” It became “What happens when our only viable option gets hurt?” The answer was chaos. His replacements, Enmanuel Valdez and Endy Rodriguez, also suffered injuries, leaving the position in the hands of the light-hitting Triolo for a short time.
Then came the Tommy Pham contacts fiasco. When the veteran struggled for two months, the front office acquired Alexander Canario. But Canario was given no consistent opportunity, a problem under both Derek Shelton and Don Kelly. Then, in a moment of sheer absurdity, Pham’s season turned around because he got new contact lenses, rendering the Canario experiment moot. This sequence was a series of reactive, poorly executed moves with no coherent vision.
Too Little, Too Late
Of course, there have been bright spots. Don Kelly has brought a new energy to the dugout, and Nick Gonzales has provided a spark since his return from injury. But these are merely flashes of light in the darkness. They are positive developments in a season that was strategically doomed from the start. And this doesn’t even dig into the offensive approach that leaves a lot to be desired.
We are left with the final, frustrating question: “What if we had a healthy Horwitz and Gonzales, a seeing-eye Pham, and Don Kelly from the beginning?” The team might be better. But the fact that the Pirates require a perfect confluence of events just to potentially be competitive is the problem itself. Competent organizations build rosters that can win despite adversity, not ones that require everything to go perfectly just to tread water.
This season was the logical conclusion of a strategy that left no room for error. The front office built a house of cards and is now left wondering why it collapsed at the first gust of wind.