It’s time for a power rankings update. The Pittsburgh Pirates are sitting at 16-13. They’ve been a couple games over .500 for a while now, but haven’t been able to quite push it further. In addition, the hot start at the plate has cooled some, with the Bucs OPS falling significantly over the past week. But the rotation has them good enough to be essentially treading water, but they’re still in the top 10 in power rankings in most places.
MLB.com has them in seventh, which is down from five last week, saying:
Paul Skenes took a perfect game into the seventh inning on Friday, and it speaks to how incredible he has been to start his career that it’s a little surprising he doesn’t have a no-hitter yet. Actually, neither he nor Tarik Skubal, the clear best two pitchers in baseball, have a no-hitter yet … but that they both flirted with one within the past week is a good sign one is definitely pending.
CBS has them in seventh.
USA Today also has them seventh.
Yahoo has them in eighth.
While Fox Sports also puts them at seventh.
It seems there’s mostly a consensus for where the Bucs are right now, and that’s right around seventh or eighth-best in the Major Leagues.
The pitching staff is cruising, as the Bucs are fourth in team ERA, fifth in WHIP and third in strikeouts. The hitting, while much improved, is still not where it needs to be. The Bucs are 13th in team batting average and in OBP, but they are 26th in slugging percentage, 22nd in OPS, and 18th in home runs. So while things have definitely improved there from last season, they’re going to need to get to above average as a team in most of those categories to have the hitting where it needs to be to truly compete.
But for as low as things have been around here for a while, I’ll take just about any level of improvement, and there’s no doubting that the Bucs have that so far this season.
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