Pirates President Says Team Has Resources for Playoff Run

Williams also said that the team fell short of their goals, especially offensively, as they ranked near or at the bottom of most offensive statistical categories. This includes having the worst slugging percentage (.350) and OPS (.655), the least runs (583), RBIs (561) and home runs (117) of any team in baseball.

He said that despite the poor offense in 2025, they have the chance to fix that in the offseason, especially with additional space on the payroll from trades they made at the deadline.

"I think you just have to look at what we have in terms of talent. We're building off of one of the best young pitching staffs in all of baseball," Williams said. "But we knew we fell short offensively. We had a historically bad offensive year, but those are things that can be course corrected, and we believe we have the ability to do that this offseason. We've given ourselves the flexibility at the trade deadline in terms of payroll, and we believe that we have the ability to go out and add. And we have pitching depth that we can use in order to turn that into hitting depth." 

Some of that "flexibility" came from trading third baseman Ke'Bryan Hayes to the Cincinnati Reds, who took on the remainder of the $34,258,040 million on his contract through 2029.

Other ways the Pirates gave themselves space on their payroll may come from trading left-handed pitcher Bailey Falter to the Kansas City Royals, who was reportedly a non-tender candidate, plus trading right-handed relief pitcher David Bednar to the New York Yankees, who would've commanded a solid significant fee for his final year of arbitration.

Williams declined discussing payroll for next season, on whether or not they would commit to increasing payroll for the 2025 season, but that they have what it takes to be successful in 2026.

"We have sufficient resources to go out and build a team that can make the playoffs in 2026," Williams said. "It's not a resource issue. We just have to go out and execute."

Williams didn't define how they had sufficient resources for winning next season, but that they have ideas about how they'll go out and make the team better, including using their pitching to make their hitting better, likely via trades, and that they need to have the MLB hitters they currently have improve in 2026.

"Again, I'm not going to speak to quantification of payroll." Williams said. "There's lots of things that go into making sure you're able to be successful in a season. That includes taking from a position of strength, like pitching, and being able to turn that into hitting. There's opportunities there. It's not just a matter of what you're adding in terms of payroll and free agency acquisitions.

"There's lots of ways you can do that. But in addition to that, we need to be able to make the changes inside of baseball operations to continue to improve, that allow our players to continue to improve at the major league level and have success on the major league level."