Can these 3 Pirates players sustain success after 2024 breakout seasons?

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ 2024 season was largely a disappointment. Many players, especially their relievers, underperformed, leading to a huge late season collapse. They won just 76 games, which, after so much promise, was exactly how many they'd won in 2023. Although the roster fell flat overall and failed to reach the expectations they'd been presented with heading into the season, not every player underperformed. Some played much better than they were expected to.

The Pirates had three breakout players in 2024: Joey Bart, Dennis Santana, and Bailey Falter. By the end of the 2024 season, each was playing a major role for the club. As we approach the 2025 season, they are still penciled into prominent roles, and after how well they did last year, they definitely deserve it. But can they sustain their performance from last year?

3 breakout Pirates players who might not sustain their performance entering 2025

Joey Bart

Expectations were extremely low for Joey Bart when the Pirates picked him up. Although Bart was the second overall pick in the 2018 draft by the San Francisco Giants, and was once one of the better prospects in all of baseball, Bart had just a .623 career OPS heading into 2024. The Pirates then acquired him for the very low cost of 2023 eighth-round pick Austin Strickland.

Bart was initially expected to play a backup role, but took the Pirates by storm and ran away with the starting job. Bart appeared in about half of the season, playing 80 games with 282 plate appearances while hitting .265/.337/.462 with 13 home runs. Bart’s 7.8% walk rate was only slightly below league average, and he cut his K% massively down from 35.4% with the Giants to a playable 25.9% rate. Overall, Bart had a .347 wOBA and 120 wRC+.

Now, Bart enters the 2025 season as the Pirates’ starting catcher. The question now becomes whether Bart can sustain or approximate his success from the previous season. Bart's underlying metrics were solid; he put up a .330 xwOBA and .431 xSLG% (expected slugging percentage), and both were above-average marks. His 9.4% barrel percentage was another plus number on his stat sheet. He made some significant strides when it came to plate discipline. Bart had a 43.5% whiff rate on offspeed pitches in 2023, but cut that down to 33.3% (the league average whiff percentage on offspeed stuff was 31.7%). Bart also swung at pitches outside the zone less frequently than before, with a 26.4% chase rate, compared to over 30% with the Giants.

But his biggest improvement was simple: making contact on pitches in the zone. Bart’s in-zone contact rate was just 76.5%, while with the Giants. He upped that by nearly 10% after the Pirates acquired him, sitting at 86.1%. The league average in-zone contact rate in 2024 was 85.2%, so Bart was making contact at a better-than-average rate.

There were a lot of positives on display in Bart’s game with the Pirates last year that could help him sustain solid production in 2025. The bigger question might be whether Bart can make a breakthrough with his defense in addition to his bat. Bart was once projected as a plus glove behind the dish. He displayed an above-average arm and average pop time last season, but graded out as a below-average framer and blocker.