For the 2026 Pittsburgh Pirates, the final week of the MLB regular season is a sprint toward the gaslight at the end of the tunnel.
The club enters play Wednesday with wins in its last five games. It’s already earned its most wins (80) since 2018 and could plausibly reach its fourth-best win total since 1992 if it can win three games by Sept. 27.
Most franchises would be embarrassed to trumpet stats like that. Turn on a Pirates broadcast between now and the end of the season, though, and you’ll find boundless enthusiasm about the year that was and the direction of the franchise that last changed baseball operations leadership nearly seven years ago.
The Pirates win their 80th of the year, 2-0 over the Cardinals. They've won 5-straight for the first time since April.
— Dan Zangrilli (@DanZangrilli) September 23, 2026
If you're under the age of 34, the 2026 Buccos, at worst, are the 5th best Pirates team of your lifetime.
That’s the Pirates’ pre- and post-game flagship radio show host previewing the petroleum-based glow that the front office will welcome its fans into the embrace of in the weeks to come.
Never mind what team president Travis Williams set as the bar before the season when he said the goal was to reach the MLB postseason. “Period. Full stop.” Never mind that they’ve already been mathematically eliminated for several days and functionally eliminated for nearly two months.
Now glacial progress is enough for celebration. More than that, it’s historic, if you were metaphysically born both three and a half decades ago — and yesterday.
The Pirates won 69 games the year Neal Huntington was fired as general manager in 2019. If they get to 83 by the end of the week, that’ll be 14 games of progress over a seven-year odyssey with Huntington’s successor Ben Cherington.
In between, they’ve lost 100 games twice, posted six losing records and come no closer than – as of Sept. 23 – seven games of reaching a National League playoff field that’s expanded by two teams since Cherington was hired.
At that pace, they’ll approach the 100-win mark the Milwaukee Brewers are nearing in about a decade. Their division rival has already clinched a fourth consecutive NL Central title in a media market two thirds the size of Pittsburgh while spending approximately $40 million more on its roster, per Spotrac.
Management will get away with that company line, too, because the fan base has essentially calcified into three camps.
The cynics stopped buying tickets years ago and have about as much influence on production as Statler and Waldorf as a result. The Pirates will finish somewhere around 25th or 26th in attendance and draw nearly a million fewer fans than they did in their last playoff season in 2015.
The casuals are happy to make the pilgrimage once or twice a summer to enjoy their IC Light Mangos with a pleasant view of Downtown Pittsburgh. They’re content to conceive of PNC Park more as a baseball theme park than a competitive venue.
Then there are the cockeyed optimists who will excuse practically anything because they “love baseball” as a substitute for the therapy they should have sought years ago to resolve whatever trauma results in perceiving this particular team to be an escape.
Bob Nutting has made more than enough bilking the latter two camps over his 19 years as principal owner to graduate from a local rich guy to a billionaire. So there’s no real need for him to reach too far for the excuses.
Injuries are one. Shortstop Konnor Griffin, power-hitting outfielder Oneil Cruz, first baseman/outfielder Ryan O’Hearn and starter Jared Jones all missed significant time. Other organizations might have cultivated the depth to weather the attrition that every team faces over a six-month season. This one will want you to believe it got a uniquely raw deal, even as it sits fifth in runs scored anyway despite the absences.
The unforeseen regression of Paul Skenes is another. The NL’s reigning Cy Young winner has seen his ERA balloon from 1.97 in 2025 to 3.91 in 2026. If only he’d continued throwing like the greatest pitcher of all time indefinitely, the Pirates would be right there. The plan would have been brilliant. Alas, Skenes has pointed to his World Baseball Classic participation as disruptive of his training regiment.
And, of course, the sport’s economic structure is always a crowd pleaser at this time of year. Nutting has bemoaned the collective bargaining agreement with players that he voted in 2023 because it enshrines an inherent economic disadvantage. The Pirates paid $106 million for their roster this year, per Spotrac. The Los Angeles Dodgers will pay $378 million, more than three times what the Pirates do.
Ipso facto, this mediocrity will do until the owners conquer the players in new CBA talks this winter to institute a salary cap – and some kind of logic that explains why it’s the Dodgers’ fault that the Pirates can’t compete with the Brewers despite facing the same disadvantages.
Cherington’s job therefore appears to be safe. After all, he acquired rental Brandon Lowe last winter and got a 30-homer season as a payoff. He’s responsible for the successful first-round selections of Skenes, Griffin, Nick Gonzales and Seth Hernandez, the next great hope for the rotation currently ranked the No. 7 prospect in all of baseball. He developed starter Braxton Ashcraft into becoming an All-Star. And he’s presided over the unexpected power delivery from former prospects Esmerlyn Valdez (17 homers in 72 games) and catcher Rafael Flores Jr. (10 homers in 44 games.)
All is well if you don’t think too hard about actual results and instead spend the summer enjoying broadcaster Joe Block’s statistical fun house, where the implicit message at any given time is that half the team could be headed for Cooperstown.
Only Pirate with a longer single-season, consecutive-game extra-base hit streak than rookie Esmerlyn Valdez: pic.twitter.com/65v2y1T7QF
— Joe Block (@joe_block) July 21, 2026
Only younger player than #Pirates Esmerlyn Valdez in MLB history to have both an RBI and extra-base hit in 8 consecutive games (and he wasn't a rookie) pic.twitter.com/Oe5yc0RhHs
— Joe Block (@joe_block) July 21, 2026
Konnor Griffin joins Hall-of-Famer Jake Beckley (1888) as the only #Pirates to have 15+ steals and 15+ extra-base hits in their Age 20 season (or younger)
— Joe Block (@joe_block) June 30, 2026
(via @StatsPerform) pic.twitter.com/8lviCmkYxx
Most 4+ hit games, Pirates, before turning 21:
— Joe Block (@joe_block) May 21, 2026
2 - Konnor Griffin
1 - Roberto Clemente
1 - Arky Vaughan
1 - Dale Coogan
(via @Stathead)
Through that lens, this team struck the oil necessary to feed its mouthpieces' rhetorical flame through another chilly offseason.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: For Pittsburgh Pirates, 2026 was playoffs or bust. Then the season started | Opinion
