The non-Paul Skenes bright spot from the Pirates' lost 2025 season

If you strip away the noise of a lost season, the empty seats, the cold bats, the standings page you learned to stop refreshing, you’re left with the thing that actually matters for Pittsburgh: a wave of young arms that arrived ahead of schedule and with real bite. This wasn’t smoke and mirrors. The Pirates finished fifth in MLB in runs allowed and led the league with 19 shutouts. 

That’s not the profile of a team stumbling into good fortune; that’s the profile of a staff with multiple pathways to win once the lineup catches up. In a year where Paul Skenes sucked up every national headline, deservedly, the most encouraging development for 2026 and beyond is that the rotation depth behind him looks…very real.

Braxton Ashcraft and friends made 2025 more than a lost year for Pirates

And yes, it’s fair to call this a bright spot rather than a silver lining. Silver linings imply you got lucky around the margins. This was built by converting stuff into strikes, by sticking with conversion projects, and by refusing to punt innings when the offense couldn’t cash them in. The identity started to harden: attack early, miss bats late, and let the defense breathe. If you’re trying to construct a sustainable winner in Pittsburgh’s lane, this is the blueprint: stack viable starters, create leverage redundancy, and force opponents to beat you three times through quality pitching instead of hoping your bats outslug payrolls twice your size.

Braxton Ashcraft is the headliner of that non-Skenes tier. Moving from the bullpen to the rotation can expose command and stamina; instead, he sharpened both. A 2.71 ERA with 71 strikeouts over 69 2/3 big-league innings isn’t a cameo, it’s a claim to a 2026 rotation chair. The shape of his season matters, too: he didn’t simply flash; he held his stuff while turning lineups over. That’s the difference between “arm” and “starter,” and the Pirates found a starter.

Bubba Chandler’s year is the reminder that prospect growth isn’t linear, but can still be timely. He scuffled at times in Triple-A, then hit the gas in the bigs and showed why he’s been so highly regarded. You can live with the rough edges when the ingredients translate under big-league lights. If 2025 was the learning curve, 2026 is the calibration.

Johan Oviedo’s return was more than a feel-good subplot; it was a competitive lever. After missing all of 2024, he logged nine starts with a 3.57 ERA and proved he belongs in the 2026 conversation. Teams spend entire winters and eight-figure budgets trying to buy that kind of stability. Pittsburgh got it from within. Pair that with Mike Burrows, who posted a 3.94 ERA over 96 1/3 innings before shifting to the bullpen late, and you start to see the layered depth.

This is where the opinionated part kicks in: the Pirates should lean into this identity, not treat it as a bridge to something else. Keep the rotation competition ruthless in February. Add one trustworthy veteran who throws strikes and eats five to six innings, not because you lack options, but because you want to protect the kids from dead-arm valleys and keep bullpen roles clean. Then spend every marginal dollar and trade chip on bats with on-base skill and contact quality. The run prevention machine is already in the building. What it needs is run support that turns 2–1 heartbreaks into 4–2 wins.

The 2025 offense was among the worst in MLB, and that reality drowned out how good the pitching became. But the staff’s performance - fifth in runs allowed, 19 shutouts - travelled, translated, and held up over six months. That’s the kind of foundation contenders are built on. If the front office treats this rotation depth as the franchise’s competitive advantage and supplements it with two real major-league hitters this winter, the conversation changes fast. Skenes may be the ace on the marquee, but the story beneath the headline is that Pittsburgh finally has the arms behind him to make every series winnable.