The NS9 Report is the start to your week. Posted bright and early every Monday morning, I’ll break down the three things that I’m looking for each week in Pirates land.

The Pirates Offense is Legit, but Weird
You don’t need to look too far to see how different the Pirates offense is from 2025 to 2026. Just look at the home run total. Last season, the Pirates hit just 117 home runs which was dead last in all of MLB. This season through 84 games they’re at 105 homers. That’s the most home runs through 84 games in Pirates history…EVER. Not a bad turnaround, huh? Their home run leader last season was Oneil Cruz with 20 in a full season. Brandon Lowe is already at 20 home runs before the All-Star break. And the Pirates have five hitters with double-digit homers already through 84 games. And two of them, Cruz and Horwitz, are currently on the IL but you still have guys like Esmerlyn Valdez or Tyler Callihan or Marcell Ozuna adding some power.

And it’s not just the power this season, they’re hitting for average, they’re scoring runs and they’re getting on base. They’re even stealing bases at a high clip. Here’s a full breakdown of the numbers relative to the rest of the league that shows just how legit this offense is:

Runs: 429 (3rd in MLB)
Runs per game: 5.11 (4th in MLB)
Home Runs: 105 (8th in MLB)
Average: .258 (3rd in MLB)
OBP: .337 (Tied for 2nd in MLB)
SLG: .418 (4th in MLB)
OPS: .754 (2nd in MLB)
wRC+: 109 (Tied for 2nd in MLB)
Stolen Bases: 74 (Tied for 7th in MLB)

Throughout this first half of the season, you see the usual tweets like “oh now the offense will go into a shell and do nothing rest of game.” And I admit, I’ve almost tweeted similar things myself. We’ve been so conditioned as Pirates fans to see horrendous at-bats and poor offenses, but I keep trying to remind folks that this offense is different. This is not the offense of 2018-2025. Heck, this isn’t even the offense of 2013-15. It’s much better than that. But while they’re very good, they’re also weird.

With all these accolades and top 5 stat categories for the offense, are they actually underachieving a bit? It sound absurd to write, but I think they could and should be even better. Consider the following, they are also second in MLB in another offensive category—Left on Base. The Pirates have left 633 runners on base. Only the Cubs have left more on base with 670. And then we have to talk about hitting with the bases loaded. The Pirates sure load the bases a lot with all this hitting and getting on base, but once they’re there, they’re not very good this season with bases loaded.

The MLB average for hitting with the bases full is .268/.310/.436 for an OPS of .746
The Pirates with the bases full are hitting just .221/.303/.353 for an OPS of .656.

The Pirates are hitting 100 OPS points with the bases loaded than they are for the season and they’re 90 points lower than the league average in those situations. For a top five offense across baseball in most categories, that’s hard to believe but the numbers don’t lie and we know the eye test shows that too. Just look at Sunday’s game where they loaded the bases three times and scored zero runs in those spots. But then still scored nine runs in the game. It’s crazy. It would be one thing if they only thing they were good at was power, that would at least make sense. But they’re also tops in average and getting on base. I guess I would sum this up as a lack of clutch problem or overthinking it when you have bases loaded. With the bases empty, they just hit so much better—a .762 OPS to be exact. Even with runners in scoring position, they have a .722 OPS. With runners on 2nd and 3rd only, they have an OPS of .875. It’s just that pesky bases loaded situation that seems to limit this offense. It’s a very strange thing for a top offense to struggle with.

So let’s look at WPA or Win Probability Added. Just on the hitting side of things, the Pirates WPA is -0.79, which is smack dab in the middle of MLB at 15th. Then FanGraphs has a “Clutch” stat which they define as: “Clutch – How much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.” In this Clutch stat, the Pirates hitters are -3.40 which ranks second to last in MLB. Only the Mets hitters have been less clutch than the Bucs. The stat is calculated by comparing an players actual performance in high-pressure situations to their own baseline performance in a neutral environment. Even if you don’t understand the stat, I think most Pirates fans would agree that this team hasn’t been very clutch so it checks out. So once again, this offense has been legit, they’re just also weird and not clutch.

The boys talked about this offense as well on this morning’s Bucco Brew so take a listen if you haven’t yet to hear Jim and DiNardo break it all down:

I want to See More of the Magician
Ladies and gentlemen, I want…no, I need to see more of Esmerlyn Valdez. From Sunday’s game following the rain delay, Enjoy…

The magician took over Pirates Twitter on Sunday with his nuke…

Valdez uncorked one 461 feet for a spectacular home run that nearly broke X. We already know he loves lefties which he told the NS9 last season, but this was off of a RHP too. While this has been fun with Esmerlyn, we don’t know if this is a flash in the pan (we’ve seen a lot of them over the years at PNC Park) or if he’s going to end up being the real deal. But I’m ready to find out. With Cruz and Horwitz sidelined until sounds like after the All-Star break, let this kid play and not just against southpaws.

His meteoric rise is kinda insane. He turned 22 years old in January and last season, he was at High-A Greensboro where he had a .977 OPS. He was sent up to Double-A Altoona and continued to hit with a .772 OPS. Then he murdered the Arizona Fall League with 8 home runs in 19 games for an absurd 1.355 OPS. Then continued to rake at Triple-A Indy this season with a .914 OPS and 13 home runs in 56 games. He has hit nukes at every level he’s been at and it led him to Pittsburgh where he now has five home runs with a 1.002 OPS. He’s hit a home run in three straight games. It’s super small size, but so far his minor league numbers are translating to the Majors. His strikeout rate does need to come down a bit. He was striking out 21.5% of the time at Indy and 24.7% at Altoona last season. That’s manageable when you’re hitting nukes every 10-15 plate appearances. But so far in MLB, he’s at a 40.0% strikeout rate. His walk rate is down to compared to the minors. If he can adjust that ratio and continue showing off the power, Valdez could be in for a legit MLB career. It would be so nice for the Pirates to hit a home run on one of these international signings especially a hitter. At any rate, I can’t wait to find out. Keep playing the kid.

The Yankee Doodle…What?
On the broadcast Sunday, I believe Greg Brown referred to this upcoming road trip to Philadelphia and Washington this week as the “Yankee Doodle Roadtrip.” Hilarious. Hey, it is Fourth of July week coming up so why not. The Pirates will spend the nation’s 250th year anniversary in the nation’s capital playing the Nationals. Saturday’s game begins at 11:05AM FYI. I love my afternoon games, but a morning start? OK I’m here for it.

They have four games with the Phillies and three with the Nationals and no off day this week during this Yankee Doodle affair. The Pirates need to stack some wins and while they’ve been fine on the road, it’ll be tough against the Phillies and Nats. The Phillies have turned it around since Don Mattingly took over as manager and the Phillies are now 10 games over .500 and look like they’ll catch the Braves in the NL East. Meanwhile, the Nats have a better record (barely) than the Bucs at 43-42 and they’re young hitters have balled out. Remember all those offensive numbers above of the Pirates being third in runs scored and runs per game? Well the Nationals are first in both categories. That could be a high-scoring series. At some point, the Bucs need to stop treading water and stack some wins. We’ll see if this is the week for that.