May 1, 2014 By John Perrotto for The 2 min read

The Pirates’ offense is broken and that isn’t just a small-sample-sized overreaction 26 games into the season.

The Pirates had scored three runs or less 15 times going into Wednesday night’s game against the Orioles at Baltimore — which was rained out — and were 2-13 in those games. When they scored at least four runs, they were 8-3.

Among the 30 major league teams, the Pirates ranked 25th in runs scored with an average of 3.69 a game. They were 26th with a .296 on-base percentage and 27th in slugging percentage with a .351 mark.

Little wonder the Pirates were just 1½ games ahead of the woeful Chicago Cubs for last place in the National League Central.

So how do the Pirates go about fixing the offense? The easy and most popular answer is to promote outfielder Gregory Polanco from Class AAA Indianapolis, plug him into the lineup as the right fielder and do away with the Travis Snider/Jose Tabata platoon.

Polanco would undoubtedly be an upgrade as he went into Monday hitting .400 with four home runs, a .460 on-base percentage and a .644 slugging percentage in 23 games.

Yet it would be a leap of faith to believe the 22-year-old would perform at quite so high of a level in the major leagues. He also could not make up for all of the Pirates’ offensive deficiencies.

General manager Neal Huntington deserves credit for being patient then acting swiftly to acquire first baseman Ike Davis form the New York Mets earlier this month once his trade value dropped. Though Davis hit .185 with one home run in his first nine games, he is a significant improvement over Travis Ishikawa.

What the Pirates most need is improvement from within.

Center fielder Andrew McCutchen is the only player hitting significantly better than major league average at his position. Catcher Russell Martin — who is on the disabled list — and second baseman Neil Walker are also performing above the league mean, though not by much.

Third baseman Pedro Alvarez, shortstop Jordy Mercer and left fielder Starling Marte all need to pick up the pace.

If they don’t do so soon, the Pirates will be buried so far in the standings that it won’t matter who they add to the lineup.