Besides Opening Day when they walked the farm, the Pirates bullpen has kinda been lights out since. Hunter Barco was the only culprit Tuesday night giving up runs and with his 47 pitches thrown and 71 pitches in the past four days, I think it’s safe to say he’ll be unavailable today for the rubber match in Cincy.
Dennis Santana is probably another one who’s unavailable tomorrow. We saw a couple relievers pitch four-out-of-five days last season, but it was rare. Ideally, I’m sure Don Kelly would like to get out of Cincinnati without using Santana again, but if he’s needed, Kelly may call upon him with the off day coming on Thursday. Everyone else I’d imagine will be available and ready to go.
Here’s hoping we don’t need very many relievers with Paul Skenes back on the mound for his second start of 2026. Skenes is coming off a disaster Opening Day where he had the shortest outing of his career just 0.2 innings after allowing five runs to the Mets. I’m pretty sure Skenes is going to be very motivated to not let that happen again. Pirates are heavy road favorites this afternoon at -155 odds and hopefully it’s a 6 or 7-inning typical Skenes start that we’ve come accustomed to. This Reds lineup struggled to hit Bubba Chandler yesterday so I’m interested to see what Skenes will do against them and coming off of a start you know he wants to forget about and move on and that begins this afternoon.
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