The Pirates starter Braxton Ashcraft left after five innings with the game tied at 2-2. Two innings later, the Pirates bullpen and defense put the game out of reach in an 8-3 loss to the Marlins. Wilber Dotel gave up four runs out of the pen and Antwone Kelly made his MLB debut and gave up two runs as well.
Here’s my 3 takeaways from this dud…
The Entire Bullpen Stinks
I’m not sure what else you can do at this point. For all the praise and credit we gave Ben Cherington this offseason and this season for turning the offense, he deserves 100% the blame here with this bullpen. It’s been an absolute epic failure. Right now, no one can can even come out of this pen and throw a couple clean innings. Everyone is giving up runs. Friday night it was Dotel and Kelly. Carmen Mlodzinski pitched two days ago and is basically unavailable until the next next Jared Jones pitches, which is an absurd bullpen construction with one of your best relievers. And then the defense lets down this team as well, which this bullpen isn’t good enough to overcome poor defense every other night.
Kelly made his MLB debut out of Aruba in this game and I won’t blast him for giving up two if his first taste of the big leagues, he did settle in after the home run to Liam Hicks and went 2.1 innings with two runs allowed. I’m intrigued to see what he can do out of the bullpen. His numbers in the rotation at Triple-A weren’t great, but I think the stuff can play out of the pen now. But even Kelly here, the rest of the bullpen is bleak. Cherington needs to force some trades, overpay if you need to, or this season is about to be donezo thanks to the bullpen.
Team is Likely a Year Away
I said this a couple weeks back, and it’s still the case—I think this team is a year away. They’re obviously improved and have a lot of young talent, but with young talent it takes time to fully gel. Guys like Ashcraft and Bubba Chandler are extremely talented and will flash stretches of brilliance, but then frustrate the hell out of you too. The defense and bullpen struggling is just too much for them to overcome. And then injuries happen to Konnor Griffin and Oneil Cruz and suddenly the lack of depth stands out. The Pirates are back at .500 and every time they’ve been there, they go on a mini winning streak and stay above water. I think that’s all this season is ultimately going to be. Hovering around and maybe even a little above .500. And that may be enough to compete for a wildcard spot, but at the end of the year I think this team will come up short.
Bob Nutting doesn’t appear to ever be close to canning Cherington, so it’ll be a massive offseason for him to try and rebuild this bullpen and not have it sink the Pirates two straight years.
Endy Looks Like a Good-Hitting Major League Catcher
Fans have been calling for Endy Rodriguez to take over the starting catcher’s role and he had another nice night at the plate. He doubled and scored in his first at-bat for the first run of the game in the 3rd inning and then led off the 5th inning with a solo home run, his second of the year. How good would it be to have a catcher who can actually hit? Endy is now slashing .240/.387/.420. The team has some decisions to make as Henry Davis will be back very soon from maternity leave, Joey Bart is on his rehab assignment right now coming back from a foot infection and Rafael Flores hit his first MLB home run Thursday. I’m not sure I want to go back to watching Henry pop everything up. Endy has to stay, in my opinion, and it’ll be interesting to see what the team decides with Bart and Davis both coming back.
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