Is This the Year Oneil Cruz Puts it All Together?
Fans have long waited for Oneil Cruz to put it all together across a full season, and 2026 could be the year it happens.
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After a decade of futility, including nine straight NL Central finishes of fourth or worst, the Pittsburgh Pirates finally look like a team that’s ready to compete.
New manager Don Kelly, who had his interim tag removed this offseason, has his team right in the mix of a tough NL Central. Pittsburgh is 13-9, has a +25 run differential that is fourth best in the NL, and has won or tied four of their six series to start the season.
Having a dominant pitching staff certainly helps. Led by reigning NL Cy Young winner Paul Skenes, the Pirates staff ranks tied for second in all of MLB with a combined 3.22 ERA.
But it takes runs to win baseball games, and Pittsburgh hasn’t finished in the top half of MLB in scoring since the 2016 season. This year’s squad is looking to finally reverse that trend.
The team finally brought in some notable free agents last offseason, adding Brandon Lowe, Ryan O’Hearn, and Marcell Ozuna, to go along with a young core looking to take steps forward. Still, for the last few years, Pirates fans have hoped that the offense would be led by an exciting, now former, shortstop.
Oneil Cruz was originally signed by the Dodgers in 2015 out of the Dominican Republic. He was traded to the Pirates at the 2017 trade deadline and would be a top-five prospect in the system by 2019.
Cruz would make his MLB debut in 2021, playing in Pittsburgh’s final two games of the season. He was quick to show what made him such a tantalizing prospect, as he hit his first career homer in just his second career game.
Cruz would carry that momentum into the following season. With a large, 6-foot-7 frame that could fire lasers across the diamond and hit missiles over the fence, he finished sixth in NL Rookie of the Year voting despite playing in only 87 games.
Unfortunately, his rise to stardom would hit some roadblocks. In 2023, Cruz would suffer a fractured ankle after just nine games and miss the remainder of the season.
Cruz would bounce back offensively in 2024, setting career highs in runs (72), homers (21), and RBIs (76), but below-average defense at shortstop, as well as a logjam at the position, led to his move to center field. The thought was that his athleticism would allow him to succeed there.
However, the transition was, and continues to be, rough. It’s possible that the stress of a position change affected him elsewhere, as he wound up having the worst offensive season of his career (.200/.298/.378 slash line with a 86 wRC+).
It was hard to know what to expect from Cruz coming into the 2026 season. Well, not only has he started off with a big bounce back from a disappointing 2025, he has the early look of the star that Pirates fans always envisioned.
Is This the Year That Oneil Cruz Puts It All Together?
Cruz has been one of the hottest hitters in all of baseball for the first few weeks of the season. Slashing .292/.364/.551, his six homers are tied for 12th in MLB while his 148 wRC+ far outpaces his career rate of 104.
He continues to patrol center field and his defense still leaves some to be desired, as many saw clearly on Opening Day. If it truly was affecting him at the plate last year, though, that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore.
So what is it that’s changed for Cruz? Why is it that suddenly everything is connecting, literally, for him?
Cruz has always lit up many of the Statcast metrics over his career. Hard-hit-related stats, speed and baserunning, and arm strength numbers have generally trended over the 90th percentile per Baseball Savant, and that didn’t change last year.
That’s generally come at the expense of bad strikeout and whiff numbers, which have usually had him in just the 10th percentile for his career. That also didn’t change in 2025.
One thing that did change, oddly enough, was his walk rate. His 11.8% rate last year was easily his highest mark outside of his nine-game 2023 season and placed him in the 86th percentile.
That was of little consolation, though, as his expected batting average of .218 and expected wOBA of .324 were below career averages and placed in the seventh and 50th percentiles, respectively.
Those numbers are back to normal to start 2026, and two other ones are trending much higher than the last few years. His launch-angle sweet-spot rate (36.8%) and squared-up rate (26.6%) rank in the top half of the league for the first time in his career. Simply put, he’s just plain connecting with the ball better in 2026.
It may come as no surprise that Cruz is pulling the ball with confidence, too. His 26.3% pull rate on balls hit in the air is his best mark by almost a full 10% outside of 2021 when he played two whole games. His 50.9% overall pull rate is the best since then as well.
Cruz leans into his aggressiveness at the plate, which is why he’s always had whiff and strikeout rates over 30%, but at his best it still produces positive results on a regular enough basis. This year, he’s extended that mantra to the first pitch of at bats with a 38.3% rate that would be his highest ever.
Now, 22 games is obviously a small sample size, but things are nevertheless looking very encouraging for Cruz early on. Baseball is more fun when its young stars are performing at the top of their game, so one has to imagine that Pirates fans are having a lot of fun to start this season.
Stats were taken prior to play on April 20.
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Matt Carroll is a writer for Just Baseball and former site expert at Reviewing the Brew. He studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently…