The Pirates Need Answers From Their Young Pitchers

There comes a point in the season that if you aren't a contender, you have to move your goalposts.

What is the best thing you can do to set yourself up for 2027?

And normally, the call is, play the kids.

who are the rookies, who are the guys on the 40-man roster who haven't gotten that opportunity yet?

And whenever you look at the position player side, I don't see a whole lot here.

Especially with, like, Jhostynxon Garcia on the injured list.

Hitting-wise, while their performance in the second half has been disappointing, I don't know how much they can do.

Injuries have dictated what this lineup is going to look like down the stretch.

On the pitching side, though, the Pirates are currently operating with only four dedicated starting pitchers.

And instead are calling up some guys, they're doing these long rolls, not really a lot of traditional starts.

Would they just be better off giving those opportunities to the rookies and seeing if anything sticks?

Good morning, and welcome to OffBeat here on North Shore Nine, presented by FanDuel.

My name is Alex Stumpf, and this is a daily look at your Pittsburgh Pirates.

Whenever Mitch Keller went down with injury, the Pirates didn't bring in another starter.

They didn't trade for someone.

They didn't sign anyone.

They've operated with that being a bullpen game.

With Karim Mlodzinski usually throwing three or four innings, he's been the bulk guy in those situations.

Sometimes he starts, sometimes it's out of the bullpen.

It is what it is.

But he is not a dedicated starting pitcher right now.

And maybe he could be in 2027, but they don't want to put that on him right now.

And the way he's been pitching in August, I don't think there's a lot of clamoring for it.

He absolutely needs to be a starting pitcher right now.

So it's like, all right, what else do you look at?

Who are the players on this 40-man roster who can make an impact moving forward?

And I think there are a couple.

Like, Wilber Dotel had a weird year, and yeah, had a couple blow-ups.

But overall, I think he had a pretty good year.

Antwone Kelly has had some iffy Major League outings and got off to a very rocky start in AAA.

But do you not see him pumping 99, his last time in the majors?

I don't know if he's going to be a dedicated starter in the future.

I don't know if he's better in that swingman role.

I personally think he'd be really good as a single-winning reliever.

But in any circumstance, it's like, okay, see what happens.

Hunter Barco was a top 100 prospect at this time last year.

There are guys here that whenever we were talking preseason about this being a pitching factory and how the young starting pitching had to carry this team, they weren't in the forefront, they weren't the guys that's like, oh, yeah, they're going to be carrying this 2026 rotation.

But they were young.

They were depth.

They were guys that's like, let's see if they can emerge, take that next step.

And they haven't really had a lot of opportunity at the Major League level to do so.

Their opportunity really has been more in that bulk relief role.

And we have seen a lot of players getting optioned and called, that swap over the course of this year.

And I get you look at Hunter Barco's performance in AAA.

And it hasn't exactly been great this year.

And I know he's also struggled at the Major League level right now, but he's bounced around a lot.

He hasn't really settled into a role.

This rotation could really use a lefty.

And while he hasn't had like a really great outing at the Major League level yet, I don't hate the idea if they just want to say, hey, Carmen Mlodzinski was supposed to start three or four innings every game.

Why don't we do that with him instead?

And just see what happens.

Let it eat.

Don't worry about going six or seven innings.

Just going through the rotation or the lineup twice.

See what you can do.

And then you can have like Mlodzinski or whoever piggyback off of that.

If not him, you know who has had a couple really good Major League downings is Khristian Curtis.

Curtis is someone who, internally, they have liked for a while.

And there was a lot of buzz around him coming into the year.

He gets good movement.

He throws pitches in the zone.

I think there is some good horizontal east to west that he's able to do that could make him a viable Major League pitcher.

But so far, he's really just been up for a couple days, pitch, and then go back down.

And I get that's what the opportunity was at the time.

But I don't see any reason why it has to be that way the rest of the year.

Back in 2023, the Pirates really only had two dedicated starting pitchers for the final two months of the season.

They had Mitch Keller, and they had Yohan Oviedo, and it was a six-man rotation.

And the other four days, it would either be like Luis Ortiz pitching in a bulk role, a dedicated bullpen game, an opener.

They would get creative.

But they really didn't have a whole lot internally.

Their internal options were traded away, underachieving, or hurt.

So they just went with that chaos approach.

And it worked, but it was also one of those feeling like they were walking on eggshells.

Where it just took one time for a bulk reliever to have a bad outing, to lay an egg, and days worth of work and planning is out the window, and you have to start making transactions.

You don't really have to do that here.

You don't have to do it, especially whenever you have guys like Bakar, like Mlodzinski, who can go multiple innings already at the major league level.

I know there's always going to be concern of how deep Jared Jones can go into games this year.

We've seen recently the Pirates usually bringing up a fresh arm on Paul Skenes's starts.

Not necessarily because Paul Skenes's is going to be, five and dive, or, they're worried about it.

But it was one of those, you have to keep an eye on him.

And if something doesn't look right, he's the guy that you pull the plug and you're like, we'll figure this out later.

These guys have been just in that second class of pitcher, and you have to really look at this rotation in 2027.

Because if this team is going to be competitive, they need to get better starting pitching.

Young starting pitching is the most valuable thing in this game.

And the Pirates have potential to do it, but we've also seen guys struggle this year.

We have seen pitchers have ups and downs.

Even guys like Braxton Ashcraft, who have had all-star campaigns, really good seasons.

He had a rough month in there.

You need to set yourself up as best possible in 2027.

And I think the best way to do that right now is have a really good understanding of what your rotation options are.

You need a veteran in this rotation.

And Mitch Keller is under contract for two more years.

Very interested to see what happens to him this winter.

Do they cut their losses?

Trade them?

Because I don't have this as insider information, but just in general, I think they could probably salary dump him this winter if they wanted to go that route.

If they're like, give me a backup catcher in the Dominican Summer League and you take this guy who's two years, he's going to be paid 30-something million.

If they wanted to go that route, they could.

If they wanted to eat some money and get a better prospect or a player back, I think they could do that also.

Or you could just roll with him and be like, look, it's someone who, he had a bad year, he was injured, but there was a reason why we gave him this extension.

He was one of the most reliable arms for this team for years.

Just count on a bounce back.

If they want to do that's fine, but this rotation needs veteran leadership and stability.

And if you're not going to do that externally by adding a veteran arm, then you really need to make sure that your depth options are solid.

You need to have quality depth.

And we really haven't seen, these guys get that opportunity.

There haven't been a ton of pitching injuries before Mitch Keller.

Whenever Jared Jones was rehabbing, there was still Carmen Mlodzinski, starting.

And then there was that brief, or that period of time where they just didn't do anything.

And that's fine.

Everyone was healthy.

You don't have to call up a rookie just to give a rookie a start.

But right now, there is such a clear lane, in my opinion.

Every fifth day, you don't have a guy dedicated for that spot.

We've seen this team go to six-man rotations once rosters expand in September.

You could do that.

There's a lot of different ways where I think these young starting pitchers could get opportunities.

And look, I know Thomas Harrington hasn't had a good year.

I know Hunter Barco hasn't exactly had a great year.

I know Antwone Kelly hasn't exactly had a great year.

I know if you look at Wilber Dotel's stats, they're higher than what you would think if you watched him just pitch over the course of this year.

But they're young.

These games don't mean a whole lot if your playoff odds are sub-1%.

Give them the opportunity to learn.

Give them an opportunity to show, yeah, Hunter Barco, I pitched well down the stretch.

I am taking control of this opportunity, and whenever you think this winner, this rotation could use a lefty, I better be on that list of candidates.

That's what I think would benefit this team the most down the stretch, is to just get a real good understanding of what your team is in 2027, what your pitching staff is.

Are these guys going to compete for rotation spots?

Are they going to compete for bullpen spots?

Are they just going to wait in AAA for an opportunity?

You need all three.

You need all three.

And that's fine.

They haven't really been given a ton of opportunities to show which one of those three categories they're in.

Or, hey, maybe you could get a definitive answer for someone like Thomas Harrington, who's had a rough go in AAA the next two years, or last two years.

And just be like, you know what, he's not part of the picture, use the 40-man spot elsewhere.

Getting a no as an answer isn't necessarily a bad thing whenever you're playing in September with virtually no playoff hopes.

Getting an answer, even if it's no, is not a bad thing.

You have to give them the opportunity to answer the question, though.

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