Pirates’ playoff hopes are so bleak it feels like October already passed

Heading into this season, The Athletic ranked the Pittsburgh Pirates as the worst MLB franchise of the 21st century, to the point of giving them the only negative score out of all 30 teams. This is the kind of thing which happens when you only have three playoff appearances since 1992. Unfortunately for the long-suffering Pirates fanbase, it seems to be more of the same so far in 2025. Bottom of the NL Central. The third-worst record in all of baseball at 12-21.

A significant part of the issue is a lineup, which ranks a lowly 27th in OPS and was tied at 25th in runs scored heading into Friday's slate of MLB action.

FanGraphs giving the Pittsburgh Pirates no love and little hope for MLB Playoffs

Irrespective of what's to blame, though, the bottom line is we're only a month into the new season and the Pirates' hopes of even challenging for a playoff spot are already looking decidedly bleak. Nowhere is this more apparent that in FanGraphs' damning assessment of where the team currently stands.

We appreciate these statistics change on a daily basis, but at the time of writing, FanGraphs gives the Pirates a lowly 3.4 percent chance of qualifying for the playoffs. They are also given a 2.1 percent chance of winning their division and a 0.1 percent possibility of claiming the sixth World Series in franchise history.

This is obviously a demoralizing position for Pirates fans to be in, no matter how used to it they are. It's also plain embarrassing, considering this is only the fifth week of the MLB season. However, as is often said in dire circumstances, the only way is up.

At least the future looks bright for the Pittsburgh Pirates

Along these lines, there is genuine reason for hope that better days are ahead, when considering Paul Skenes is your staff ace in a promising rotation which will soon include Bubba Chandler. Additionally, you can look further down the road with the promise of Konnor Griffin and what he will bring to the majors.

For now, though, based on FanGraphs' playoff odds, the Pirates fanbase is going to have to continue to grin and bear it. If nothing else, at least they have plenty of practice in doing this, but it surely must hurt losing hope so ridiculously early into a season which lasts 162 games.

As a final point, we hate to dampen the enthusiasm of any optimistic Pirates fans out there -- some must exist right?! -- but they will have to go 77-53 the rest of the way to reach the 89 wins it took to get into the playoffs as an NL wild card team last season. With that type of scenario facing him, even Lloyd Christmas would be hard-pressed to say with any delusional confidence: "So you're telling me there's a chance?"

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