The Pittsburgh Pirates have spent the closing stretch of the season reminding everybody what might have been. Now there’s another number that makes their empty October even harder to swallow.
According to TJStats, entering Wednesday the Pirates ranked seventh in Major League Baseball in total team WAR. Ahead of them were the Los Angeles Dodgers, Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays. Right behind Pittsburgh sat the San Diego Padres and Cleveland Guardians.
That grouping tells the whole story.
The Dodgers and Brewers had already won their divisions. The Rays had clinched the AL East.
The Yankees and Red Sox had locked up playoff spots. The Cubs and Padres were in National League Wild Card positions entering Wednesday, while Cleveland led the AL Central.
And then there were the Pirates, stuck in the middle of all of it and already eliminated.
Good afternoon.
Every one of these teams (minus the #Pirates) holds a playoff spot as we sit here today. Pittsburgh was eliminated from postseason contention last week. pic.twitter.com/Qi3CM453gE
- ForTheCity_412 (@JimStamm22) September 22, 2026
That’s what makes this season sting. It would be one thing if Pittsburgh had simply fallen short because the roster wasn’t good enough.
That has been the familiar script in too many years before. But this time, the talent was there in a way that’s tough to ignore.
WAR isn’t a perfect measure, and baseball doesn’t run on a spreadsheet. It doesn’t fully capture when injuries hit, how well a team uses its pieces or what happens when a bullpen blows up at the worst possible moment. But that’s also why the Pirates’ place in this ranking feels so brutal.
They were not miles away. They were not a roster full of placeholders. By one broad measure of team value, they were right there with a cluster of clubs that have already punched tickets to October.
The problem was turning that value into wins.
Pittsburgh gave away too many winnable games in the first half because the bullpen couldn’t hold leads. The offense went through stretches where the parts never quite clicked together.
Injuries knocked Oneil Cruz, Konnor Griffin, Ryan O’Hearn and others out at damaging times. Marcell Ozuna’s disastrous season soaked up too many plate appearances for too long.
Even the rotation, which was supposed to be the backbone, didn’t always look as dominant as expected.
Still, the value added up. Just not fast enough, and not in the right moments.
That’s the uncomfortable truth for the Pirates front office as it evaluates 2026. The strong finish can’t erase the larger failure, because the larger failure is sitting right there in the standings.
This team may be close. In fact, it probably is.
But being close and missing the postseason is what makes the season so frustrating.
The Pirates don’t need to celebrate this ranking. They need to look at the teams around them and ask why almost all of them turned that kind of value into October baseball.
In Other News...
Pirates Make A Troubling Oneil Cruz Call In Seasons Final Stretch
Oneil Cruz will sit out the Pirates next game against the St. Louis Cardinals, with Jake Mangum stepping into center field as Pittsburgh continues to manage a painful left-hand fracture. With the club already eliminated from postseason contention, the decision is as much about protecting Cruz as it is about surviving the final stretch, and it comes with a lineup that looks noticeably different from the one fans have gotten used to.
Cruz is expected to be out of the lineup for about a month and 25 games, leaving the Pirates to shuffle the order in ways that say a lot about where this season stands. Brandon Lowe is set to hit fourth, while Rafael Flores Jr. will bat second for the first time in his career, a reminder that September in Pittsburgh has shifted from results to evaluation and caution. [Read more 🡒]
Pirates Prospect Surge Is Putting One Name Front And Center
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Hernandez is part of a broader wave of prospect recognition across the system, with Axiel Plaz, Jared Jones and Wyatt Sanford earning South Atlantic League All-Star nods and Connor Wietgrefe plus Nick Cimillo collecting International League weekly awards for Triple-A Indianapolis. For Pittsburgh, the significance is less about the individual plaudits than the way they reflect a farm system getting production at multiple levels, even as the next step for Hernandez remains the one everyone is watching. [Read more 🡒]
Pirates Turn To Another Patchwork Plan With Cardinals Series At Stake
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The setup gives the Pirates a real chance to claim the series, but it also leaves little margin for error. With the rotation thinned out, the early innings become especially important, and the club will be counting on the bullpen to hold the line long enough to keep the matchup from slipping away in a series that still hangs in the balance. [Read more 🡒]