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Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Jack Suwinski. Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

How the Pirates' dream start has turned into a nightmare

By Adam Gretz | Last updated 5/30/23

On April 29, the Pittsburgh Pirates swept a doubleheader in Washington to improve their record to 20-8, giving them the best mark in the National League.

They were the biggest surprise in baseball, manager Derek Shelton had signed a new contract extension and things finally seemed to be looking up for a team and fan-base that has known mostly losing over the past 30 years.

It all proved to be very short-lived.

After their 14-4 loss to the San Francisco Giants on Monday, the Pirates fell back below the .500 mark for the season as they remain mired in a month-long slump that has seen them go 6-19 and erase all of the goodwill they created at the start.

Not only have the Pirates started to lose games at an alarming rate, they are also playing poor fundamental baseball filled with fielding errors, base-running mishaps and an alarming lack of clutch hitting.

Following Monday's loss Shelton chalked a lot of it up to being a young team that is struggling to deal with adversity.

"We're dealing with a bunch of young players,” said manager Derek Shelton. “When it's going well with young players, everything is OK. When things go a little bit awry, we have to make sure we stay on track. … We've still got to continue to learn, we've still got to continue to get better, and we've got to get back on task a little bit."

The bigger issue, though, is a simple lack of talent and depth. The Pirates have relied on career journeymen like Josh Palacios and Chris Owings to play meaningful games, while several other players have cooled off from white-hot starts. The result has been an offense that has averaged just 2.9 runs per game over the past 25 games.

The other problem is that no starting pitcher has been reliable outside of Mitch Keller. Of their six wins over this recent stretch, three of them have come with Keller on the mound, with two of them ending in shutouts.

In non-Keller starts they are just 3-17 since April 29.

Making things even more frustrating is management does not seem to have much motivation to improve things. Top prospects like Endy Rodriguez, Henry Davis and Quinn Priester are not being advanced through the system, while the team continues to rely on inferior veterans.

General manager Ben Cherington said this weekend that their internal projections did not have the Pirates being as good as they were at this point in the season. It is a concerning thing to admit because the Pirates record at this point is almost identical to what it was at this point last year when they played at a 100-loss pace for the third year in a row.

Cherington is four years into his role as the team's GM and has never actually said what their timeline for contention is. All we know is they are a fading team, and the person responsible for building them actually expected them to be worse than this. Nothing about that is encouraging.

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