No matter who it is, Ben Charrington signs, or for that matter, doesn't sign the defining

facet of the 2026 season for this club will be the improvement or not the existing hitters. Good morning

to you. Good. Thursday morning. I'm Dan Kovachovich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports and this is Daily

Shot of Pirates. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you're into football and or hockey,

I also offer daily shots of Steelers

and Penguins in the same place that you found this. Matt Higgs, first season as hitting coach,

probably couldn't have gone much worse than it did. And while I'm a proponent of giving any

hitting or pitching coach more than a year to install and get buy-in from

the program that they have.

I mean, I'm going to say it again, it could not have bottomed out more than it did,

not just because the pirates finished at the bottom of

almost every offensive category spanning Major League Baseball, but also because, and maybe even

more disturbingly, the individual hitters that they did have or thought they had regressed.

Not one of them, not two of them, not a bunch of them, all of them.

Across the everything, just no exceptions.

Heck, the guy who's probably been the most reliable hitter this team's had over the past

decade. The one guy who was money in the bank was Brian Reynolds, not a superstar, but enough that

he earned his way twice onto the National League All-Star team.

In 2024, the last season for the Pirates under Andy Haynes' hitting coach, Reynolds batted

275 and that would drop to 245 this past season. He had 24 home runs in 2024, 16 this past season. 791 OPS, 24, 720 this past season. Everything got worse, no

exceptions, to the one guy who'd seemingly been immune to all this beforehand.

Now, O'Neill Cruz's drop made Reynolds look like stepping off a curb.

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