Jared Jones and Mason Montgomery Owned September. The Pirates' 15th-Ranked ERA Says It Wasn't Enough.

The Pittsburgh Pirates' season ended with 82 wins, their first winning record since 2018, and no October baseball. The final week of the calendar delivered one more piece of evidence about where this team actually stands — and it landed on the pitching side.

Jared Jones and Mason Montgomery were named National League award winners for September, an honor sweep for a club whose best month arrived too late to matter in the Wild Card race. Pittsburgh went 15-9 in September, scoring 98 runs and allowing 96, and the two flamethrowers were the loudest reason why.

Jones, who finished the year 5-6 with a 3.72 ERA and 123 strikeouts in 101.2 innings, closed on a tear: a 1.60 ERA, 12.3 strikeouts per nine and a 0.743 WHIP over his final five starts, with zero earned runs in four of them. His season line includes a 1.08 WHIP and 2.4 walks per nine, and his 3.37 FIP suggests the run prevention was earned rather than lucky.

Montgomery was arguably the bigger story, because the Pirates' bullpen was the roster's shakiest unit. He posted a 2.88 ERA across 70 appearances, striking out 105 in 68.2 innings with a 1.03 WHIP and 18 saves — numbers that made him the breakout reliever of the year in Pittsburgh and gave the club a late-inning anchor it did not have in April.

And that is where the sweep starts to sting. The 2026 Pirates set a franchise single-season strikeout record with 1,579, a 9.45 K/9 that ranked among the league's best. They also finished with a 4.07 team ERA, 15th in the majors, and a 4.21 bullpen ERA with 13 blown saves. Missing bats and preventing runs, in other words, were two very different things in Pittsburgh this season.

The rotation question marks sit at the top. Paul Skenes, a year removed from a Cy Young campaign, went 10-11 with a 3.82 ERA over 174.1 innings, striking out 200 against 49 walks with a 1.12 WHIP. That is a good season by any normal standard and a step back by his. The markets have noticed: he is priced as a longshot in NL Cy Young futures at +3500 and beyond — a market position that would have been unthinkable 12 months ago.

The offense, meanwhile, was genuinely fixed. The Pirates hit a franchise-record 189 home runs, scored 781 runs and produced the largest year-over-year improvement in runs scored in baseball. Oneil Cruz slashed .280/.368/.486 with 20 homers and 30 steals in 97 games, and Bryan Reynolds played all 162, doubling 40 times and scoring 102 runs. That is a real foundation. It still produced a .252/.330/.733 line that left the club outscored by nobody and comfortably short of the Wild Card field — the Pirates finished with a plus-28 run differential, good enough for a winning record and nothing more.

So what does the award week actually tell us about 2027? Two things. First, the pitching pipeline is producing arms with swing-and-miss stuff — Jones at the front of the rotation, Montgomery at the back of the bullpen — and that is the most repeatable skill in the sport. Second, sweep or no sweep, the gap between those individual honors and a 15th-place team ERA is the whole offseason in one sentence. If the Pirates treat 82 wins and a pair of September trophies as the arrival rather than the floor, they will be right back here next fall, winning more than they lose and watching the playoffs from home.