On the heels of going 76-86 for a second straight year, what the Pittsburgh Pirates did to improve heading into the 2025 season was among their most pressing questions this offseason.

To date, there haven’t been many significant additions for Pittsburgh outside of trading to left-handed hitting first baseman Spencer Horwitz, but if you were to ask Pirates ace Paul Skenes, they may already have enough to take the next step. Skenes, the reigning National League Rookie of the Year, believes the Pirates owe a turnaround and reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2015 not just to the fans, but people throughout the organization.

“I think we have a responsibility to the city to do that,” Skenes said. “And within the organization, too. There are a lot of people who put a lot of work into it. We’ve got really good people within this organization, within player development, within the front office, stuff like that. I think we owe it to them. You can say whatever you want about the acquisitions and all that, but we need to play better, too.”

Improving the offense, bullpen, and one-run games will be imperative to the Pirates’ success in 2025. Last season, Pittsburgh was 21st in runs per game and its bullpen had the fourth-highest ERA in baseball. The Pirates were also 25-26 in one-run ballgames.

All three of those areas were at the forefront of a collapse that saw Pittsburgh go 8-19, including a 10-game losing streak, and fall out of the playoff race. In August, Pittsburgh was 2-8 in one-run games and it was held to 3 runs or fewer in nine of its 19 losses.

Improving in such games is among the focal points for Skenes heading into the 2025 season, and he noted the Pirates’ struggles against teams that made the playoffs as part of why they weren’t able to get over the hump last season.

“I don’t know what the number of games was – that honestly might be something I look into over the course of the next month, going into spring training – we should have won [and] we didn’t,” Skenes said. “It was more than 10 last year, I know that. You look at the Dodgers, Tigers, Guardians, Yankees, Brewers – teams that were in the playoffs and we were watching from home because we pissed those games away. We’re going to have our opportunities to win, so we have to take advantage of it. It’s not a complicated thing. It’s simple, but it’s very difficult to do.”

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