3 Pirates breakout candidates that will be key to their 2025 success

1. Joey Bart

Joey Bart sort of already broke out last season. He appeared in about half of the Pirates’ games in 2024, tallying 80 appearances, and would have reached more had it not been for an injury in June that kept him out for about a month. However, Bart needs to have a full-season breakout and prove he can do it while collecting 350-400+ plate appearances, and it’s quite possible he can do that in 2025.

After the Pirates acquired Bart from the SF Giants in April of last year, he went on a tear for the Bucs and claimed the catching job for himself. Across 282 plate appearances, Bart slashed .265/.337/.462 with a .347 wOBA and 121 wRC+. Bart provided plus power, going yard 13 times with a .196 isolated slugging percentage and 9.4% barrel rate. He massively improved both his strikeout and walk rates in 2024, going from 36.4%/6.4% with the Giants to 24.9%/7.9% with the Pirates.

Bart made much better swing decisions, lowering his chase rate from 32.2% with the Giants to 26% with the Pirates. He also cut his swinging strike rate from 16.5% with SF to 10.5% with Pittsburgh. Bart performed at an above-average level in the eyes of xwOBA (.330) and xSLG% (.430). Beyond an offensive repeat, what would really help is if Bart broke out with the glove in 2025.

Bart had just -4 defensive runs saved and -3.5 framing runs last year. His throws from behind the dish averaged 84.7 MPH, ranking him an impressive 16th out of 51 qualified catchers who had 20+ attempts to second and one towards third in 2024. His pop time sat at two seconds, in the 20th percentile and towards the low end of the spectrum. For what it’s worth, Bart was considered an above-average defensive backstop by both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline in 2022 prior to graduating prospect status, so there is definitely potential for improvement in this facet of his game.