This story was excerpted from Alex Stumpf's Pirates Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
To state the painfully obvious, 2026 is going to be a pivotal season for Oneil Cruz.
He has the greatest offensive upside of any hitter on the 40-man roster, and he became just the second Pirate to log 20 home runs and 35 stolen bases in a season, joining Barry Bonds. He led the National League in stolen bases. He grew defensively in center field.
But you’d be hard-pressed to find many who were satisfied with this season. His OPS dropped nearly 100 points to just .676. His batting average finished right on the Mendoza Line at .200. According to Baseball Reference, he was worth only 0.3 WAR. He acknowledged at the end of the season, “I know I can do better.”
The Pirates are counting on Cruz to not only rebound in 2026, but to also take that next additional step. For him to do so, he’s going to need to improve in several key areas.
1. Get on the fastball
There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Cruz has not done too well against breaking and offspeed stuff in his career. Finding a way to hit sliders, curveballs and changeups would go a long way for his career, and his .140 batting average against breaking pitches needs to improve. His expected stats this year were better than in 2024, however -- mostly because he cut down on his whiff rates against breaking balls while improving his exit velocities.
Instead, the bigger issue was against fastballs, especially as the year progressed. In 2024, he hit .298 against fastballs with a .496 slugging percentage. His 2025 numbers dropped (.243 batting average, .458 slug), but they were heavily carried by the first two months of the season. In April and May, he hit .284 against fastballs with six home runs and seven doubles. From June through September, he hit .193 vs. fastballs with five home runs, four doubles and a triple.
Teams took notice, and by September he was seeing fastballs at a higher clip than he did all year. It didn’t help him break out of his slump:
If a team wants to beat Cruz by throwing him nothing but junk, there’s only so much he can do. If they’re challenging him with fastballs, he needs to win more.
2. Get aggressive
Cruz earned his reputation as a free swinger early in his career, but he actually took a positive step here in 2025. His chase rate dropped from 31.7% to 28.1%, and is now basically league average. The mindset has always been to force pitchers into the strike zone, and then he can do damage.
The problem is you can’t get a hit with the bat on your shoulder.
Cruz’s swing rate on pitches in the strike zone dropped this year from 63% to 58.2%. That was one of the 20 biggest drops among qualified hitters this year, and that in-zone swing rate is the 12th lowest in baseball. Cruz obviously is going to have a large strike zone to cover because of his 6-foot-7 frame, but he also took more pitches in the heart of the zone for a called strike than any other Pirates hitter.
Cruz expressed a desire midseason to become more aggressive at the plate. The data suggests it would probably help.
3. Get the bat out in front
Cruz had a 1.947 slugging percentage on pulled fly balls last year and a .593 slug when it went to the opposite field. Again, he had one of the bigger drops in pulled air ball rate last year, going from 17% to 13.2%.
Going by Baseball Savant’s data, the average intercept point -- where the hitter makes contact with the ball -- went from 9.1 inches in front of home plate in 2024 to 7.5 inches in 2025. If you want to get those pulled fly balls, you need to get the barrel out in front. It’s why even though he had a roughly similar fly ball rate last year, his slugging percentage on those fly balls dropped dramatically (from 1.250 in 2024 to .958 in 2025).
All of these points are going to have to be worked on this winter, mechanically and ideologically. They’re also not too far fetched. He has the talent to do some great things at the plate. The challenge is realizing that and becoming the best version of himself.