Even the Pirates' TV analysts are fed up with the team's awful start to 2025

The Pittsburgh Pirates are a bad baseball team, and there's really just no way to sugarcoat that. They might not have the worst record in the game, but they can't fully hide behind the Rockies and White Sox. The offense hasn't scored more than five runs in a game this month. Excluding the Rockies as outliers, they have the second-worst run differential through May 19 and have allowed the most runs of any team. They've squandered all three of Paul Skenes' last trio of starts by losing by a single run.

National insiders have gotten the conversation around a potential Skenes trade going at full force, and brought the conversation about the failure of the Pirates' front office to the forefront.

Over the weekend, Jeff Passan predicted that the chances of the Pirates extending Skenes are little-to-zero (which fans could've told you already) and said, "What incentive does Paul Skenes have to extend with the Pirates when the Pirates haven't shown the willingness — from Bob Nutting all the way down — or the ability to bring in guys who are going to make this team better?"

But it's not just representatives of national outlets who are exasperated by this team. Rob King, Michael McKenry, and Steven Brault, the Pirates' own studio analysts, held nothing back after Sunday's loss when pointing out the myriad flaws with this team, specifically the offense. They pointed out that the Pirates have scored the least runs in baseball, have struck out looking more than any team and, in McKenry's words, "the identity as a team isn't there."

Rob King, Michael McKenry, and Steven Brault didn't mince words about Pirates' awful offense

The Pirates signed two new bats and traded for two more this offseason and called it a day. Tommy Pham is batting under .200, Adam Frazier is batting .217, Enmanuel Valdez was batting .209 before he went onto the IL, and Spencer Horwitz (the most promising of any of the new additions) is being platooned at first base — one of the weakest offensive positions on the Pirates' roster — with Nick Solak, a guy with a career .694 OPS.

There was clearly no intentionality about putting this offense together. Rather, the front office signed declining free agents to the shortest-term deal possibles and traded for others they could still pay league minimum.

And there's no interest in getting better on ownership's part. The Pirates are the most profitable team in baseball, but none of that is going back into the organization. This is how things are going to be until Bob Nutting decides to sell the team, and he's hanging on with a white-knuckle grip.