The Pirates may be staring at the best window they’ve had to lock up Oneil Cruz.
For a long time, Pittsburgh has been waiting for Cruz to become the kind of cornerstone player you can actually build a roster around. After the drop-off he had last season, that idea looked a lot shakier. In 2026, though, Cruz has flipped the script and started to look like the Silver Slugger-level bat the organization has been chasing.
This isn’t some fluky hot streak, either. Cruz has paired his huge bat speed and hard-hit ability with a cleaner bat path, and the results show up in the angles he’s getting on contact. His launch angle sweet spot percentage has climbed from 16th percentile a year ago to 59th percentile this season.
The raw production has taken a jump with it. Cruz has added 100 points to his slugging percentage, moving from .378 to .478, and he’s sitting one homer shy of last year’s 20 even though he’s played 46 fewer games.
He’s also done a much better job against left-handed pitching. Entering the season, the 28-year-old had a .560 OPS versus southpaws. This year, he’s been much tougher to deal with, putting up an .826 OPS against them.
That’s where the Pirates’ dilemma comes in. Cruz now looks like the sort of player worth extending, but he’s also moving toward a price tag that could push him beyond Pittsburgh’s budget.
His early-season production hinted at what was coming. In the first month, Cruz hit .256/.321/.512.
May was solid too, if a little less explosive, as he posted a .255/.339/.409 line. Even with the power dip, it still looked like progress.
Then came June, and with it the injury. Cruz played only five games before suffering non-displaced fractures in the fourth and fifth metacarpals of his left hand.
In that short stretch, he was scorching at .400/.591/.600. The bigger question was whether the hand injury would stall everything he’d built.
While Cruz was on the shelf, Pittsburgh felt the absence. The Pirates went 26-32 without him, and that stretch helped leave them essentially out of the NL wild card race.
When he came back in August, the early-June surge didn’t disappear. Over 26 games since returning from the IL, Cruz has hit .295/.391/.495 with five home runs. One of those blasts was the one that set the franchise record for single-season team home runs.
That’s why the urgency is real now. A Cruz who’s running an .800-ish OPS is valuable. A Cruz who turns into a 30-30 type with MVP-caliber impact changes the whole conversation.
If Pittsburgh waits too long, the deal gets tougher by the day. The Pirates would have fewer arbitration-eligible seasons left to buy out, and if Cruz keeps climbing toward superstardom, he’ll get expensive fast and may be more likely to test the open market.
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Pittsburghs path is now as narrow as it gets: win out and get a lot of help from elsewhere. Even then, the club would still need the San Diego Padres to lose all of their remaining games, which is why the postseason picture has shifted from a realistic chase to a long shot. The Pirates have not been able to keep a winning record, and the math has become the clearest sign of how much ground they have left to make up. [Read more 🡒]