Pirates are daring teams to exploit one obvious weakness early

In constructing the starting rotation to open the 2026 season, the Pittsburgh Pirates have made a choice. Frankly, they didn't have too many options to go in a different direction, but regardless, they've decided to open the year without a lefty in the starting rotation.

In a league where balance matters, every metric is quantified, and every advantage, no matter how small, matters; it might seem like a weird choice. However, when you run down the list, it was a pretty obvious one.

Obviously, you have Paul Skenes at the top. No need for discussion there. Mitch Keller is a quality workhorse, even if he's not a true ace, so he was a lock as well. Bubba Chandler is one of the top pitching prospects in the game, and Braxton Ashcraft isn't all that far behind. There isn't a single surprise among the four.

The final spot is where there may be some debate. Hunter Barco is another highly-regarded prospect, the only southpaw truly in consideration. Ultimately, he lost out to another righty in Carmen Mlodzinski, after the 27-year-old put together a brilliant spring. That might not last throughout the season. Barco will have his innings monitored, and using him out of the bullpen as they did with Chandler and Ashcraft at times last year could be the mechanism to build him up slowly.

Still, even with the talent and upside in this group, are they not inviting their opponents to take advantage of them? The answer is more complicated than it seems.

Research shows that the Pirates' all-righty starting rotation might not be at a disadvantage after all

FanGraphs did an excellent deep dive into the platoon advantage topic back in 2020. The data they use runs through 2019, so while there may be slight variations based on where things stand today, any deviations won't amount to anything more than statistical noise.

A left-handed pitcher, based on FanGraph's findings, is at a platoon disadvantage 71% of the time. This makes sense. Right-handed hitters are more common, therefore teams have a greater opportunity to match up against a lefty pitcher than they do against a righty. Right-handed pitchers are only at a platoon disadvantage 47% of the time, meaning slightly more often than not, they have the advantage in the matchup.

With that logic, especially considering that the opposition game plans and sets lineups for the opposing starter (rather than reacting to a reliever who is brought in), it makes sense that a club would prefer to have a built-in advantage as much as possible.

The FanGraphs study also found that the quality of right-handed pitchers was better than that of lefties, specifically when it comes to velocity, spin rates, and movement. For the Pirates, this is the most important point.

In an individual case, you can certainly point to a lefty and list off a host of righties that he is better than. For example, with the exception of Skenes, Tarik Skubal is better than any right-handed starter in the game.

Now, when we're considering the Pirates and their offseason quest to add a veteran starter, the left-handed options they were targeting were of the Tyler Anderson and Jose Quintana ilk. Those guys would have added a layer of veteran savvy, but in terms of quality, it's hard to prove they'd be better than the collection of right-handers Pittsburgh already possessed.

If they were able to land the Framber Valdez plane, we'd be having a different conversation. But since the Pirates' 11th-hour pursuit of the ace southpaw was never truly serious, it was no surprise when they struck out.

So, as we can see, the Pirates won't be at quite the disadvantage it might seem on paper, and we can't even truly lament the lack of an offseason addition since the realistic targets weren't appreciably better. If everyone in the rotation reaches their potential, then the Pirates will be just fine.