Perrotto: Struggling New Pirate Bryan De La Cruz Keeping The Faith

The times have been tough for Bryan De La Cruz since joining the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The 27-year-old outfielder was acquired from the Miami Marlins at the trade deadline on July 30. The Pirates were in postseason contention and felt the right-handed-hitting De La Cruz could push them to a potential playoff spot.

However, things haven’t gone well for either De La Cruz or the Pirates in their short time together.

De La Cruz made his Pirates debut a day after the trade and the team has gone 1-12 since then. Their chances of making the playoffs for the first time since 2015 are realistically gone and, with a 56-64 record, the chances of a winning season are slim.

De La Cruz has struggled with his new team, hitting .196/.213/.196 in 11 games with no extra-base hits, 18 strikeouts and one walk.

It’s not the first impression De La Cruz was hoping to make.

“I know the fans want to see who I am,” De La Cruz said. “I’m not going good right now. I want to be good. I want to be great. That’s what I want the Pirates’ fans to know. I like Pittsburgh and I want to do well and help the team win a lot of games.”

De La Cruz’s heart is certainly in the right place, and nobody foresaw him getting off this bad of a bad start for the Pirates, even though he was having a so-so year with the Marlins. In 105 games for Miami, De La Cruz batted .245/.289/.417 with a team-leading 18 home runs.

The Pirates are 25^th in the major leagues in home runs and De La Cruz’s ability to hit the ball over the fence intrigued general manager Ben Cherington.

“Younger, still relatively young corner outfielder with power who’s produced in not an easy place to hit in Miami, bigger ballpark,” Cherington said at the time of the trade. “He has real physical ability, big power, solid defender in the corners. He’s someone that even going back to when he was acquired by the Marlins from Houston (in 2021), we had had our eyes on.

“We’ve got some personal relationships, people that know him. He was a target. He was someone that we felt like it was a good time to get a new start from Miami in Pittsburgh. We are excited to get him in our lineup, see what he can do and get to know him better.”

The Marlins have been in a massive teardown this season under first-year president of baseball operations Peter Bendix. They are buried in the National League East cellar with a 45-76 record. Amazingly, just nine players who appeared for the Marlins in last year’s loss to the Philadelphia Phillies in a National League Division Series remain in the organization.

Still, De La Cruz was caught off guard when Marlins manager Skip Schumaker told him he was being dealt.

“It was a surprise,” said De La Cruz, who resembles basketball great LeBron James. “For me, it’s hard to hear that when Skip told me ‘You got traded to another team.’ That’s the game, though. That’s baseball. I was also excited, though, because I was getting traded to a team trying to make the playoffs.”

The playoffs seem highly unlikely now, but De La Cruz can still show he could be part of the Pirates’ future. He won’t be eligible for free agency until 2027.

In the short term, De La Cruz is excited that the Pirates return home from their 0-6 road trip on Friday night to host the Seattle Mariners at PNC Park. That’s because his wife will be in town to see her husband play for the first time since the trade.

Perhaps that will provide a much-needed change in fortunes.