This surprising factor may explain Oneil Cruz’s rough 2025 season with Pirates

Oneil Cruz didn’t just have a rough 2025. He had the kind of season that makes a fanbase start arguing in circles: is he still “the guy,” or is this just what the ride looks like with a player this volatile?

And then, the North Shore Nine podcast tossed out a simple observation that’s hard to unsee: Cruz’s downturn seemed to line up — coincidentally or not — with Derek Shelton getting fired. 

We’re not saying Derek Shelton was some magical on/off switch for Cruz. But the timing is hard to ignore. The Pirates fired Shelton on May 8, 2025, after a brutal 12–26 start, and bench coach Don Kelly stepped in as the interim manager. From that point on, Cruz cratered to a .183/.267/.341 line (66 wRC+) with 12 home runs and 43 RBI. Before the change, he looked like a different hitter: .246/.374/.476, a 133 wRC+, with eight homers and 18 RBI.

One telling change may have thrown Oneil Cruz off in 2025 for the Pirates

For a player like Cruz, who is a physically gifted, confidence-driven, high-variance star who runs hot and cold — “vibes” matter more than people want to admit.

A part that some don’t consider in a mid-season firing is that it can create a weird limbo where nobody is fully sure what the next day is supposed to look like. Routines get shuffled around, messaging changes, and players who were already pressing can press even harder. If Cruz was fighting timing, chasing results, or trying to play “hero ball” on a team that was “obviously bad and out of it so early” (as the tweet puts it), the managerial change doesn’t calm that storm — it can intensify it. 

It’s also the classic trap of a lost season: once the standings turn into a graveyard, players will start freelancing. And Cruz, bless him, is basically built in a lab for the “watch this” version of baseball. When it’s clicking, it’s electric. When it’s not, it turns into ugly swings, rushed decisions, and that frustrated body language Pirates fans can spot from space.

If a managerial firing lines up with Cruz going sideways, it’s an indictment of how fragile the Pirates’ environment still is. Stars aren’t supposed to get derailed by organizational turbulence. They’re supposed to be stabilized by it.

If Pittsburgh wants Cruz to be the face of the next good Pirates team and not the mascot of the next rebuild, the goal can’t just be “hope he matures.” It has to be: build a structure that keeps him dangerous even when everything else is falling apart.