After going 71-91 and finishing last in the NL Central last year, it was clear the Pittsburgh Pirates needed some major help this offseason if they wanted to contend in 2026.<\/p>\n
To their credit, they went out and got it, acquiring several stars and drastically increasing their payroll.<\/p>\n
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The Pirates made their biggest changes to the lineup<\/a>, which ranked last in MLB in scoring, home runs and OPS last year. Pittsburgh acquired three former All-Star sluggers in Brandon Lowe, Ryan O\u2019Hearn and Marcell Ozuna, bringing in some much-needed firepower.<\/p>\n The Pirates also traded for a Major League-ready outfielder in Jhostynxon Garcia, who could be poised to break out this year.<\/p>\n Pittsburgh\u2019s pitching staff was already in good shape after ranking seventh in ERA last year, but the front office still made some notable additions in veterans Jose Urquidy and Gregory Soto.<\/p>\n While they missed out on Kyle Schwarber, Eugenio Suarez and some other big names, the Pirates have received plenty of applause<\/a> for their best winter in years. While they may not have enough talent for a World Series run, they should at least be in the mix for a playoff spot<\/a>.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Chad Jennings of The Athletic praised them this week in his roundup of the biggest offseason changes<\/a> across the National League, citing Pittsburgh\u2019s \u201creal, actual, recognizable additions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBuilding around Paul Skenes, the Pirates have probably not made themselves legitimate contenders, but they\u2019re as relevant as they\u2019ve been in a decade. Both FanGraphs and PECOTA are giving them slightly better World Series odds than the Brewers,\u201d Jennings wrote.<\/p>\n To Jennings\u2019 point, Pittsburgh appears poised for its best season in years. FanGraphs gives the Pirates the second-best odds<\/a> to win the NL Central and projects them for their first winning season since 2018<\/a>, which would be a major step in the right direction.<\/p>\n More Pirates: Keith Law Compares Pirates\u2019 Konnor Griffin To Inner-Circle Hall Of Famer<\/a><\/p>\n The post Aggressive Pirates Earn Praise For Bold Offseason Transformation<\/a> appeared first on SportsNet Pittsburgh<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After going 71-91 and finishing last in the NL Central last year, it was clear the Pittsburgh Pirates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,1751,136,20415,92,6663,19257,368,81,78,4,505,376,877,10,776,64,4297,626],"class_list":{"0":"post-579477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-pirates","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brandon-lowe","10":"tag-brewers","11":"tag-chad-jennings","12":"tag-eugenio-suarez","13":"tag-gregory-soto","14":"tag-jhostynxon-garcia","15":"tag-jose-urquidy","16":"tag-kyle-schwarber","17":"tag-marcell-ozuna","18":"tag-mlb","19":"tag-national-league","20":"tag-nl-central","21":"tag-paul-skenes","22":"tag-pirates","23":"tag-pittsburgh","24":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","25":"tag-pittsburghpirates","26":"tag-ryan-ohearn"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116092449697571008","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}