Opinion
Perrotto: Top 3 Pirates Takeaways from the 2024 Season
This is the third in a series of columns breaking down Pittsburgh Baseball Now‘s takeaways from another Pirates’ season gone by.
The Pittsburgh Pirates might have fallen out of the pennant race faster than any team in baseball history.
They were just 2.5 games out of the third and final National League wild card at the beginning of August. In less than two weeks, the postseason hopes were shattered. A 10-game losing streak is a good antidote for pennant fever.
The Pirates finished the season at 76-86, identical to their record in 2023. General manager Ben Cherington insisted Wednesday when he met with the media for a season postmortem that the organization is in a better spot than a year ago.
Yet it’s hard to think the Pirates made significant progress during a season in which they lost 32 of their last 52 games.
Here are my three takeaways from the Pirates’ 28th losing season in 32 years:
Paul Skenes is Very, Very Good
The Pirates’ biggest bright spot in 2024 was unquestionably rookie right-hander Paul Skenes’ performance.
Skenes arrived in the major league on May 11, less than a year after the Pirates selected him first overall in the amateur draft, with outsized expectations. Somehow, he exceeded them.
Skenes finished with an 11-3 record and a 1.96 ERA in 23 starts. He also had 170 strikeouts in 133 innings and allowed 94 hits and 32 walks.
And Skenes’ record should have been better. He would have had at least 15 wins if the bullpen didn’t blow multiple leads for him and the offense would have provided more run support.
Perhaps the most impressive part of Skenes’ season is that he had no clunkers. He never allowed more than four runs in any start and gave up zero or one run in 13 outings.
The Pirates have never had a generational pitcher in their history. Skenes can change that.
Hitting Philosophy Needs Overhauling
Teams that don’t score are boring. Thus, it was hard not to yawn a lot while watching the 2024 Pirates.
The Pirates were 24th in the major leagues with an average of 4.10 runs a game. They were also 23rd in batting average (.234), 25th in on-base percentage (.301) and 27th in slugging percentage (.371).
Those poor numbers cost hitting coach Andy Haines his job as the Pirates officially confirmed on Wednesday that he had been fired.
The major complaint I kept hearing about Haines from people inside the organization is they felt the Pirates hitters had become too robotic and lacked aggressiveness. Information overload and a heavy emphasis on working counts led to passivity.
Four Pirates hitters had good seasons – Bryan Reynolds, Oneil Cruz, Andrew McCutchen and Joey Bart. It’s hard to be a contender with a lineup that shallow.
As the great Larry Doughty, a long-ago Pirates GM once told me, “You can’t win a game 0-0, Big John.” Doughty, it should be noted, is the only Pirates GM to win consecutive division titles since the 1970s.
Rookies Provide Life to Dead Clubhouse
One of the few positives from the latter part of the season was infielder/outfielder Nick Yorke and outfielder/first baseman Billy Cook making their major-league debuts.
Both players had some encouraging moments on the field but also showed outgoing personalities and an unbridled love for the game. Yorke telling me that baseball runs his life did my heart good.
That might not seem important on the surface, but I’d best describe the Pirates’ clubhouse atmosphere as dead beyond the spirited ping-pong games between Dennis Santana and Bryan De La Cruz.
Most of the Pirates players don’t seem to enjoy playing baseball. Perhaps Yorke and Cook can breathe some life into a listless team.
On Monday, Griffin Floyd gave his three Pirates takeaways from the 2024 season. Danny Demilio did the same on Tuesday.
