Is this a series featuring two teams headed in opposite directions or early season mirages?
The Pittsburgh Pirates entered the offseason fresh off a seventh consecutive losing season. Their 434-598 record over that span was the second-worst in MLB behind only the Rockies (402-629). A team ERA of 4.58 (26th). 29th in runs scored!
What could be done?
The Pirates decided to retool their dreadful lineup, first by offering Kyle Schwarber a reported 4-year, $125 million deal. When that was rejected (he signed
for 5/$150MM), they signed 1B/OF Ryan O’Hearn to a 2-year, $29 million contract and have gotten an .824 OPS out of it. But O’Hearn’s production does not lead the team. That honor belongs to second baseman Brandon Lowe, who was acquired for RHP Mike Burrows in a three-team trade involving the Pirates, Rays, and Astros. He has a Pirates-leading 10 home runs and .941 OPS. He hit .247/.326/.481 for the Rays across 8 seasons, but he’s off to a white-hot start. Even his defense (-23.8 Defensive Runs Above Average in those 8 seasons) has been great (+1.8 in 2026). They also signed Marcell Ozuna to be their DH, but he’s been a Deversian bust to this point, posting a putrid line of .186/.256/.288 in 129 PA.
Former Giants prospect Bryan Reynolds is off to a great start, too, hitting .254/.399/.410 and has played in every game to this point. Joey Bart has been pushed into more of a backup role at this point and in his .619 OPS (54 PA) he has 19 strikeouts against just 2 walks. The Pirates’ own farm hand, Oneil Cruz has shifted from shortstop to center field and has gotten better as a hitting, with a .773 OPS to start the year while playing the new position. He vacated shortstop so that the Pirates could call up their top prospect, Konnor Griffin, all of 20 years old. He’s hitting .257/.320/.389 with a pair of homers and 9 walks against 36 strikeouts in his first 125 major league plate appearances.
So, there’s a buzz in Pittsburgh and not just because it’s the setting of the excellent HBO Max drama The Pitt, but because their baseball team is finally competitive. They’ve been good on the road this season (10-8), though with a negative run differential, too. Regardless of how the season ends, the extra work they put in to reimagine their offense has gone a long way. They’ll be playing a Giants team tha has a distinct lack of imagination when it comes to rebuilding or reimagining any part of the roster, and the “stand pat” attitude towards the lineup coupled with the “win the lottery five times” strategy for the pitching staff seems to have set them up for a lost season just 37 games in.
Sure, you can’t win the division in April, but you can lose it all in May, and so far the Giants are off to a worst month in the second month of the season (1-5) than how they started the season (2-4); but, they’ve also lost 8 of 9. They spent the offseason crowing about how they felt they had the best lineup the franchise has seen in years, but through 37 games they’re merely the absolute worst lineup going in every way. Their pitching is valued at 24th (2.0 fWAR), Pittsburgh’s is ranked 3rd (5.3 fWAR). Knowing that most Giants fans and probably the front office abhor Wins Above Replacement, I’ll look at another stat that makes the gap between these two staffs look smaller than it is: the Pirates’ team ERA of 3.70 is 7th in MLB while the Giants’ 3.99 ERA is 11th. So, there you go. There’s not much of a difference between these two teams in this one very narrow respect. So, if you focus on that, maybe that’ll make it easier to imagine that the Giants are as good as the Pirates have been — unless you’re sticking with recent history and imagining that the Pirates will pumpkin back into the Pirates of the last seven years and the Giants will similarly revert to the… around .500 team they’ve been 5 of the last 6 seasons.
Series overview
Who: Pittsburgh Pirates (21-17) vs. San Francisco Giants (14-23)
Where: Oracle Park | San Francisco, California
When: Friday at 7:15pm PT, Saturday at 6:05pm PT, Sunday at 1:05pm PT
National broadcasts: None.
Projected starters
Friday: Carmen Mlodzinski (RHP 2-2, 4.76 ERA) vs. TBD
Saturday: Braxton Ashcraft (RHP 1-2, 3.02 ERA) vs. TBD
Sunday: Bubba Chandler (RHP 1-4, 4.76 ERA) vs. TBD
Players to watch
Pirates
Konnor Griffin / Brandon Lowe / Bryan Reynolds: Yes, yes, I just mentioned all these guys up above, but over the past two weeks, they’ve really led the Pirates’ lineup, with wRC+s of 183, 182, and 158, respectively. Griffin’s slugging .596 and Lowe .625. Griffin has also stolen 4 bases. Reynolds has scored 11 runs in 13 games and has a walk rate of 24.1% against a strikeout rate of 25.9% — interesting!
Spencer Horwitz: Sort of the big offensive acquisition the Pirates made last offseason in a trade with the Blue Jays. He’s struggled on the road this season (.530 OPS), but the first baseman has a .920 OPS in 31 career PA vs. the Giants, but in Oracle Park he’s hitting .381/.409/.619 in 22 PA with a home run and a pair of doubles. This might be a perfect setup for him, because the Giants might try to get around the hotter hitters in the lineup and forget about him.
Mason Montgomery: He was the other part of the three-team trade that netted Pittsburgh Brandon Lowe and all the 26-year old lefty has done is strike dudes out (22 in 14 IP). Okay, and walked duded (8 in 14 IP). And, uh, even given up a lot of hits to them (1.429 WHIP). But he’s allowed just 1 home run in those 14 innings, and that’s because his stuff is really something, with a 98 mph four-seamer paired with an average-ish curve and high spin slider (2,648 rpm). He’s not the team’s closer (that’s veteran Gregory Santos, who has a 1.42 ERA in 19 IP), but it feels like he’ll come into situations late in the game that will, effectively, decide them.
Giants
Willy Adames: This series will be the definitive test to determine whether or not Willy Adames passed away at some point this season and what we’re seeing haunt the Giants lineup right now is, in fact, a g-g-g-ghost. He has a lot of experience against the Pirates from his NL Central days, and while that .790 career OPS in 299 PA isn’t among the best results against a specific team, if he has a series that good we’ll know he’s still alive.
Jung Hoo Lee: He has just a .611 OPS in his career against Pittsburgh, but let’s balance that against what he’s done over his last 24 games (96 PA): .319/.354/.462 (.816 OPS). This stretches back to that terrible Baltimore-Cincinnati road trip. He has 5 doubles, a triple, and a pair of homers to go with 5 walks against 9 Ks. Of course, he’s just 2-for-22 in the first 6 games of May, so, maybe he’s back in a cold spell along with the rest of the offense? We’ll just have to find out!
Bryce Eldridge: This will be a classic test of a rookie, especially a rookie of the modern game, and especially for Eldridge himself. The three scheduled starters in this series all average either 96, 97, or 98 mph with their fastball, and have one exceptional second pitch while the rest of their arsenals are average/sub-average. Those other exceptional pitches will play around with his tremendous height. Mlodzinski has a splitter he throws more often than that fastball (though, he has a wipeout sweeper too). Ashcraft has a 46.2% whiff rate on his curveball (throw 28.5% of the time). And Chandler has a 92-93 mph changeup.
Tony Vitello watch
He’ll be managing against another first year manager in Don Kelly. The only differences are that Kelly played in the majors for 9 years and was an organizational scout and then staffed as a coach on two major league staffs prior to being named the Pirates’ manager. But, you know, other than that, exactly the same.
Prediction time
The Giants really need to sweep this series to get to a record (17-23) that, historically, has been one that can be recovered from in the quest for a solid season. I’m pretty sure these 2026 Giants are awful, and maybe even historically so, but I’ll let this one last flimsy historical mark be the deciding factor before I delete Have Hope In Your Sports Team app from my brain.
