A lot of things that have gone wrong for the Pittsburgh Pirates this season were rather predictable.
Paying a starting pitcher and two lefty prospects for an injured Spencer Horwitz has yet to work out. After undergoing wrist surgery in the offseason, Horwitz has only recently resumed playing baseball and has yet to play in a game for the Pirates.
Their rotation suffered a key loss when Jared Jones went down. Trying to fill that void with Carmen Mlodzinski, a righty that has historically performed better as a reliever, has largely not worked.
Their lack of any real offensive prowess, a product of a disappointing and quiet offseason, has them near the basement of nearly all Major League Baseball offensive rankings.
But one thing that was unpredictable about the 2025 Pirates was the near complete collapse of Bryan Reynolds, one of the team’s few upper echelon bats and an everyday player for them.
If the Pirates were going to have any chance at succeeding this season, they were going to need a monster season out of Reynolds. That was a fairly safe bet to make; the two-time All Star has slashed .276/.352/.470 over his six major league seasons with the Pirates. He averages 20 home runs and 69 RBI a year.
Yes, the Pirates would have likely needed Reynolds to hit closer to .300 to make up for the lack of offense surrounding him, but that was certainly possible for the switch hitter. He’s been one of baseball’s more consistent above average batters since breaking into the league with the Pirates in 2019.
Unfortunately for the team and for him this season, Reynolds looks like a shell of himself.
Per the good folks at North Shore Nine, 83 outfielders have had at least 100 plate appearances this season. Reynolds ranks dead last in Fangraphs’ Wins Above Replacement, at -0.8.
It can only go up from there, right?
Baseball-Reference actually has a harsher view of Reynolds, giving him a -1.0 WAR so far on the year.
None of his slash line stats rank higher than 72nd, where his .204 batting average and .266 on-base percentage keep him ahead of only a handful of other everyday major league outfielders.
If I had told you that a quarter of the way through the season that Adam Frazier, Ke’Bryan Hayes, and Enmanuel Valdez would have a higher OPS than Reynolds, you would have done the following:
- Asked me what drugs I was on
- Asked me if Reynolds was hurt
- Asked me who Enmanuel Valdez is
Yet, that’s where he and the Pirates are right now.
His .590 OPS ranks ninth on the team, and whether him ranking ninth with that figure is a bigger statement on how bad he has been or how bad the rest of the team is, it’s certainly not good!
He’s striking out at a 28.3% clip this season through 41 games. That alarming spike is 5.5% higher than the major league average and 6.1% higher than his personal career average.
But for as bad as the stats look on the season, May has been particularly cruel for Reynolds. He is 5-for-44 (.114 average) with 11 strikeouts and 11 total bases since the calendar flipped.
He’s grounded into six double plays this season, including three here in the month of May. He’s one shy of tying his total from last season and on pace to blow his career high of 13 (set in 2022 and tied the following year) out of the water.
For a player that rarely shows emotion, good or bad, the frustration has been evident for him. After making awkward contact with a pitch that he clearly wanted to pull back on, Reynolds threw his bat to the ground before he was thrown out at first.
Although he picked up an RBI on Monday night, he went 0-for-5, and has not notched a multi-hit game for the Pirates since May 2nd.
He just doesn’t look like himself out there. Whether there’s something bothering him that we as fans aren’t privy to, or it’s just a terrible slump, he doesn’t look like the Reynolds we know at all.
If there is a saving grace for Reynolds, it’s that his time of the year is just a few weeks away. June has historically been the 30-year-old’s best month of the baseball season, and it isn’t particularly close.
Reynolds is a career .340/.409/.572 hitter in the month of June. His .981 June OPS is .141 higher than any other month, with August coming in at .840.
Reynolds’ .340 batting average is .060 higher than the next highest month, and his home run and RBI paces also clear any other month of the season.
Last season was another shining example of his excellence in June. In 2024, Reynolds was slashing a slightly underwhelming .241/.320/.402 through the first two months of the season. But true to form, Reynolds turned it on come June. On June 1st, he went 2-for-5 with a home run and a pair of RBI in Toronto against the Blue Jays.
In June last year, he slashed .330/.388/.604 for an OPS just under 1.000. It was once again his best month of the season.
Reynolds and center fielder Oneil Cruz (who is currently day-to-day with an injury) were supposed to be the catalysts of offense for this team. Cruz is surpassing expectations so far this season. Reynolds is going the opposite direction.
Simply put, this roster was not constructed to account for Reynolds to struggle. Giving him a few days off to try and reset sounds like a good idea, until you look at the batting performances of the other outfielders on this team:
- Matt Gorski: .206/.206/.353
- Alexander Canario: .167/.250/.315
- Tommy Pham: .176/.262/.213
- Ji Hwan Bae: 0-for-5
Giving Reynolds a day off isn’t really an option, because even with how much he is struggling right now, can new manager Don Kelly trust that any of his other options would perform better?
The numbers don’t say so.
You’re probably nearly as likely to see Reynolds turn it around while still getting everyday reps than you are to see one of the names mentioned above go on a massive run.
Years from now, baseball historians will study what made Reynolds so good at the plate. The Pirates have to hope that 2025 gives those researchers more data on that subject.
Fifth Avenue Sports 
Leave a comment