Pirates have a Joey Bart problem they can no longer avoid in 2026

Since being acquired by the Pirates at the beginning of the 2024 season, Joey Bart has been one of the team’s most consistent offensive producers—his 110 wRC+ in that span is the highest among players who played for Pittsburgh in both seasons. The former No. 2 overall pick has enjoyed a bit of a career resurgence after being traded over from San Francisco.

But heading into 2026, Bart's role is far from a certainty. Over the course of last season, Bart had his starting role usurped by Henry Davis, and it’s easy to see why. Davis was a disaster at the plate, but he was a No. 1 overall pick, and the team still hopes his bat will eventually take off. It was Davis’ defense and his relationships with the young pitching staff that enabled him to assume starting catching duties.

Davis has become Paul Skenes’ personal catcher, but his success is not limited to his work with the Bucs’ superstar ace. As a whole, there was a night-and-day difference between games caught by Davis and Bart in 2025:

With that being the case, Davis has to be the starting catcher in 2026. And it doesn’t make a ton of sense to have Bart, who is comfortably below average in every facet of catcher defense (throwing, blocking, framing, and managing the pitching staff), on the bench, since backup catchers are almost always plus defenders and game managers.

The Pirates need to figure out what to do with Joey Bart in 2026

There are two possible solutions to this conundrum. One, if the Pirates want to keep Bart, is to make him learn first base. It's pretty shocking, considering his lack of defensive prowess behind the dish, that he's never played first base as a professional.

The position switch would not only remove most of Bart's negative value, but also would make it easier to get his bat in the lineup against left-handed pitching. The one thing Bart does consistently is crush lefties (.941 OPS as a Pirate). That would allow him to still be useful on a team whose lineup has become increasingly more left-handed over the last couple of seasons.

The other option is to trade him. Teams like the Red Sox, Rays, Padres, and Astros have recently expressed interest in adding a backup catcher, and such a trade might enable the Pirates to add back to their pitching depth. That would open the door for a spring competition between Endy Rodriguez and Rafael Flores, both of whom are much better defensive catchers.

Bart just isn't a typical backup catcher, and one of the things the Pirates learned over the course of last season is the importance of the pitcher-catcher relationship. There is a path for Bart to provide value to the Pirates—it just isn't as the backup catcher. They need to figure out how to make him a consistent contributor or trade him for other useful assets.