Pirates Named MLB Breakout Team
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PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Pirates have struggled for the greater part of the last decade, but 2025 may serve as the season where they get things right.
Bradford Doolittle of ESPN wrote his top 10 breakout teams for the 2025 season and placed the Pirates at No. 9.
He looked at it from a player-led standpoint, determining which teams had players that would breakout and what does a breakout season look like for each team.
Doolittle picked the 10 teams from, "those that figure to use a lot of young players in important roles and those with a number of key players coming off subpar or injury-marred seasons who project to bounce back."
While he chose the Pirates as one of the top 10 teams that could breakout, he was also disappointed with their lack of spending when it came to free agency.
The Pirates' free agent signings include Andrew McCutchen for one-year, $5 million, Tommy Pham for one-year $4 million, left-handed pitcher Andrew Heaney for one-year, $5.25 million and bringing back former All-Star second baseman Adam Frazier on a one-year, $1.525 million contract.
Doolittle sees this lack of investment troubling, especially with the talent in their starting rotation, incluidng National League Rookie of the Year Paul Skenes, plus Mitch Keller and Jared Jones, who earned consideration as a dark horse for the NL Cy Young award.
"I guess I cheated in selecting a number that didn't have anything to do with this exercise, but it still irks me, so there it is," Doolittle wrote. "The Pirates do have a high degree of stability in their forecasts, more so than pure breakout rate, and this resulted in 704 additional playoff berths from the control set of simulations, ranking third behind the Giants and A's.
"But that's all just more reason to be annoyed at Pittsburgh's lack of aggression in building around its potentially dynamite young rotation. Paul Skenes should see a marked uptick in innings, which is a manner of breakout but of course there's barely any ceiling in what he might do. The Pirates' highest-ranked breakout candidate in this system is Skenes' rotation mate, Jared Jones."
Dominic writes for Pittsburgh Pirates On SI, Pittsburgh Panthers Pn SI and also, Pittsburgh Steelers On SI. A Pittsburgh native, Dominic grew up watching Pittsburgh Sports and wrote for The Pitt News as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, covering Pitt Athletics. He would write for Pittsburgh Sports Now after college and has years of experience covering sports across Pittsburgh.