PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) \u2013 Before signing with the Pirates, Ryan O\u2019Hearn played in the playoffs each of the last three seasons. He said it\u2019s the first time in his career he\u2019s fired up for the second half of the season as the Pirates resume in Cleveland Friday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in a good spot,\u201d O\u2019Hearn said. \u201cI like where our team is at. Obviously in the first half there are things we can clean up, but you can say that about any team. It\u2019s going to be a fun second half to be a Pittsburgh Pirate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bucs enter the second half two games out of the playoffs and three games over .500.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in a good spot,\u201d said Pirates starter Paul Skenes, adding they are just trying to grow the gap between wins and losses. \u201dWe are playing good baseball. I\u2019m super-confident in our ability to show up after the break. It\u2019s been fun to be a part of. We\u2019ll keep it rolling. A lot of baseball left to play. It\u2019s going to be a fun year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both will be a huge part of the second half of the year, O\u2019Hearn is second on the team with 63 RBIs and Skenes, even with the higher numbers, is still the team ace and has pitched better in the last couple of games.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to show up every day and get better and to go out and compete and win a baseball game,\u201d said Pirates manager Don Kelly. \u201cI think we are doing that. We\u2019ve done a good job of that. Is there a little more consistency? I think that there is.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you are going through 162, that\u2019s a long way. I think we\u2019ve done a good job of being resilient, continuing to persevere through some ups and downs and that\u2019s what it\u2019s going to take as we go through the rest of the season too.\u201d<\/p>\n
There have been ups and downs\u2014the ups of the top scoring offense in the first half months after being the worst offense in baseball in 2025. Braxton Ashcraft is an All-Star and Esmerlyn Valdez stunning baseball with 10 home runs in 27 games including a huge grand slam in a comeback win against the Brewers.<\/p>\n
The downs being the 17 blown saves, second in the National League. The numerous times they should have closed out a win. Starting pitching, as a whole, hasn\u2019t been as good as expected. Then the injuries-O\u2019Hearn out early, Konnor Griffin out until September, Oneil Cruz and Spencer Horwitz, Endy Rodriguez and even Wilbur Dotel, who impressed out of the bullpen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that we\u2019re not at full strength and we\u2019re probably one of the best offenses in baseball if not the best offense in baseball right now,\u201d said Pirates home run and RBIs leader Brandon Lowe. \u201cTo say that and we\u2019re not at full strength, is a pretty impressive thing to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always the ups-and-downs of the first half of the season, injuries being one of those for us,\u201d said infielder Jared Triolo. \u201cWe feel like we are in a good spot and ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know who it\u2019s going to be but someone is going to step up,\u201d Skenes said. \u201cIt\u2019s just the team that we have. It\u2019s the character that we have here and in AAA. I don\u2019t think anyone had Esmerlyn Valdez coming up and doing what he\u2019s done to this point in the season. It\u2019s been special to watch, special to be a part of. It\u2019s going to be a fun second half.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lowe, who has only been with the team since December, said it\u2019s more, it\u2019s something he noticed pretty quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s multiple guys that came in and there are multiple guys that understood that they needed to put some work in this offseason,\u201d Lowe said. \u201cEvery single guy did exactly what they needed to do. You say that because it\u2019s not one person that is carrying this offense, it\u2019s up-and-down the lineup. Every single guy is taking great at bats, putting the bat on the ball and getting the job done.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust proud of the way guys have competed through it,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cBlocking out the outside noise and just showing up every day regardless of the day before. I like the way we are competing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been telling a lot of guys in this clubhouse, if you are in it at the end, there is nothing like it,\u201d O\u2019Hearn said. \u201cWe have some playoff experience in here, it\u2019s going to be cool. Really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust got to keep going,\u201d Skenes said. \u201cIt\u2019s special, can\u2019t wait to see what happens in the second half.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) \u2013 Before signing with the Pirates, Ryan O\u2019Hearn played in the playoffs each of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4662,34879,53363,34762,1423,22146,73,75,74,10997,104971],"class_list":["post-245174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-baseball","tag-brandon-lowe","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-don-kelly","tag-mlb","tag-paul-skenes","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-ryan-o-hearn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}