This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Paul Skenes’ velocity.

On July 2, I published an article with nine thoughts on Skenes’ season to that point. He had just allowed eight runs against the Phillies while averaging 96.3 mph on his four-seamer. Those were both career-worsts at the time, and things haven’t gotten much better since. Skenes’ ERA currently sits at 3.88 while his fastball still doesn’t have the life we saw his first two seasons in the Majors. In his seven starts since my last article on Skenes, he’s thrown just five pitches at 98 mph or higher, resulting in a ball, a whiff, a ground out and a pair of doubles.

When I wrote my first Skenes story, I think we were all still floored that he wasn’t just shrugging off this slump, so people were just throwing theories up against the wall (yours truly included). People were blaming the World Baseball Classic, but I don’t think a brief vacation from Spring Training would cause problems months later. Bill Murphy was being accused of telling him to not throw as hard. No pitching coach in 2026 is telling his pitches to slow down their motion and sacrifice velocity after they already had success in the Majors. His weight has been a talking point of late, and while he is heavier than he was at 21 years old, just about every pitcher puts on weight at this stage of their career. He looks like a pitcher, and hey, Tarik Skubal got body shamed this year too.

Plenty have speculated that he is injured, but both Skenes and Ben Cherington have pushed back on that. Cherington said on his 93.7 The Fan radio show Sunday “there’s no indication, no information to suggest that he’s hurt or that there’s an injury. He doesn’t believe that. We don’t see that based off the information we have.” All analysis in this article is based on the assumption that he’s not pitching hurt. With the Pirates’ playoff hopes almost diminished, there is no reason for him to pitch through an injury anyway.

I’ll repeat what I wrote in July: I think this is a mechanical problem. I looked at his lower half then, but after chatting with more people around the league (everyone seems to have an opinion on Skenes), I’m looking at his arm action more. Is it the cause for his drop in velocity? Well, it’s a theory. One thing I can say for certain is that it’s different.

Skenes’ arm angle is higher this season, averaging 26 degrees compared to 23 degrees his first two seasons. That isn’t a drastic enough change to say this is a new arm slot, but it’s different enough that it could have an impact on his pitches.

His offspeed stuff is not playing nearly as well this year, with Baseball Savant measuring those pitches at -3 run value. Hitters are batting .333 against the once vaunted splitter. Meanwhile, its profile movement has changed, moving further away from the zero inches of inverted break you’d ideally want from an offspeed pitch:

That could explain why his splitter, once the best pitch in his arsenal, has not played well this year. As for his fastball velocity, it could lie with his arm motion with that higher release.

Let’s take a look at a couple of pitches. The first is from June 23, 2024. It was his final pitch of the game and he dialed up a 101.5 mph heater with the allusion of rise. Alex Jackson of the Rays didn’t stand a chance:

The next pitch is from his most recent home start on July 25. He again tries to win at the top of the zone with a fastball, but it was clocked at only 95.6 mph. He got significantly less spin on it (2,164 RPM compared to 2,326 RPM on the Jackson strikeout), it didn’t have that rise and it fell flat in the strike zone. Ian Happ watched it go back and Skenes gets away with one for a strike:

These are two extreme examples, but I would argue the 2024 pitch is one of the best he’s thrown in the Majors and the 2026 pitch is… not. Comparing those two deliveries he has a lot more arm motion now than he did in 2024:

Here’s a slowed-down overlay of those deliveries. Look at how much further Skenes’ right arm juts out now compared to 2024:

Skenes’ 2024 delivery was a simple out and back. There really isn’t any wasted potential energy. In 2026, the ball goes back further in his windup and the first part of his motion is just trying to get back to that 2024 spot. You can make an argument that he’s lost fastball velocity because he’s not being as efficient with his delivery. He’s not maximizing that potential energy.

I was sent a 3D model of how Skenes is moving from a league source, and while I can’t share it here, there are also some changes in Skenes’ lower half. He’s dipping lower in his push off the rubber and striding further with his front leg. According to Baseball Savant, he’s getting more extension now than he did in 2024.

I gave it my best stab at another overlay the Jackson strikeout and the home run Esteury Ruiz hit hit off Skenes on Aug. 11, but video from this angle is hard to come by and it’s not a perfect overlay. The data is pretty irrefutable, though, and I think this gives a good gist:

If you’re falling off the mound more and you have more arm action in your delivery, some would argue that’s a textbook definition of overthrowing. If nothing else, a higher arm angle, more arm motion and a longer stride makes this a different delivery than what we saw his rookie season when he was throwing harder.

Could Skenes revert back to a motion closer to his 2024 mechanics? Sure, but I don’t know if he can really make that change in August or September. It’s a long season and it’s a lot harder for a pitcher to make significant mechanical tweaks midseason than it is for a hitter. His start Wednesday is going to be telling. Did the extra time between outings help at all, because if he’s still throwing 95 mph fastballs down the middle and all parties continue to say he’s not injured, how does he get better this year?

I don’t think Skenes needs to throw 102 mph to be effective. For as much as we all have cried that the sky is falling, his season stats are still pretty darn good. But those stats and peripherals are trending in the wrong direction and are a far cry from what we know he can do. He’s the most important pitcher on the staff and the Pirates need him to pitch like the guy we saw in 2024 and 2025. The best way to do that would be to look at how that 2024 guy pitched.

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Aaaaaaaand… exhale.

There was plenty of frustration about the Pirates’ lack of activity in the weeks and days leading up to the Trade Deadline, but they at least emerged with the top reliever who was dealt and a couple other auxiliary right-handers. Luke Weaver, who has pitched to a 1.84 ERA over 44 innings for the Mets this year, was acquired for Minor League infielder Sammy Stafura. They then picked up two more arms in buzzer beater deals, adding Kirby Yates from the Angels and Lake Bachar from the Marlins for a sampling of prospects outside of their top 30. They’re going to be more supporting players to this group, but man, did this bullpen ever need support.

“We feel good that we were able to add, we think meaningfully, to an area that we’ve obviously talked about for awhile,” Ben Cherington said over Zoom Monday. “… We’ve worked hard to try to add to the team because we believe in the team. We believe this team can win games and make a push into October. The bullpen was an area we intended to strengthen. We feel good about the individual pitchers coming onto the team. We feel like the prices made sense. We’re going to look forward to getting to know all of these guys and seeing them come together in the clubhouse now.”

I don’t know how much analysis needs to be done with Weaver. He is a really good pitcher with one of the best changeups in the game. There’s no asterisk clarifying that he would benefit from a change of scenery or a mechanical tweak. Weaver is one of the game’s top 20 relievers, he’s under team control for 2027 and he comes at a discounted rate since the Mets are sending over significant cash considerations this year and next. Whether he’s used as a closer or Don Kelly wants to use his leverage arms by committee in the ninth, this bullpen finally has a stud.

It’s hard to even be too upset about losing Stafura. He was the club’s No. 9 prospect and was having a terrific year with High-A Greensboro, but there’s a middle infield jam in the system right now (especially with Konnor Griffin locked up as the club’s shortstop for the next eight years). He was also acquired last year for Ke’Bryan Hayes. So not only did the Pirates manage to get out of Hayes’ contract right before it became a disaster, they flipped the player they got in the trade for a stud reliever. Stafura is on the path to the Majors in a few years, but he wasn’t going to help anytime soon outside of being trade bait.

It’s pretty easy to love this trade. It’s pretty hard to hate the other two.

Yates is a 39-year-old veteran who is having a decent bounce back campaign after failing to be a ringer for the Dodgers’ bullpen in 2025. He’s pitched to a 3.95 ERA over 27 ⅓ innings with some quality peripherals (37.1% chase rate, 33.6% whiff rate, 30.5% strikeout rate). Left-handers have hit him hard – a recurring theme with this bullpen – but he’s held right-handers to a .432 OPS. Even if he’s a righty specialist at this stage of his career, he’s a pretty good one. And for the cost of right-hander Kyle Robinson, who was acquired this year for a non-rostered Alika Williams, it’s a gambit worth doing.

Bachar is a late bloomer who has four years of team control remaining in his age 31 season. He’s allowed nine home runs over 58 ⅔ innings, but still has a decent 3.84 ERA and has a healthy 30.6% whiff rate. He can go multiple innings and his splits against lefties aren’t too bad (.225/.311/.392 slash line this year). It’s not a headliner move, but it’s one that could make the bullpen better in 2026 and beyond. As for the outgoing package of players the Marlins are getting (RHP Brandan Bidois, OF Brian Sanchez and INF Hyun Seung Lee), it’s two toolsy lottery tickets and a reliever who looked downright bad in his first tastes of the Majors. There’s a very real chance this trade is just a controllable reliever for a controllable reliever, with the Pirates getting an immediate upgrade.

So the Pirates drastically overhauled the weakest part of their team for one top 10 prospect, one other in the top 30 and some party favors. Everyone besides Yates is under team control for 2027. Suddenly this bullpen could look something like this:

Closer: Luke Weaver

Set-up: Camilo Doval, Gregory Soto

Leverage spots: Mason Montgomery, Kirby Yates

LOOGY: Evan Sisk

Multi-inning: Lake Bachar, Yohan Ramirez, perhaps a converted starter dependent on the fifth starter plays out (Wilber Dotel and Carmen Mlodzinski come to mind)

Wait, fifth starter?

Mitch Keller was placed on the 60-day injured list Monday, effectively ending his season. That shoulder injury popped up after his start Sunday, and the Pirates didn’t pick up a starting pitcher. They didn’t pick up a hitter now that Ryan O’Hearn is expected to miss 6-8 weeks either. The activation of Spencer Horwitz and impending return of Oneil Cruz could be viewed as deadline additions, so it’s not as costly as being down a starting pitcher.

Even before Keller’s injury, there were storm clouds around this rotation. Paul Skenes has a 5.37 ERA since May 7 against teams not named “The Rockies.” That’s half a season of him pitching like a No. 5 starter. Jared Jones has been brilliant lately but probably isn’t going to be fully unleashed in 2026. Braxton Ashcraft and Bubba Chandler are also going to be closely monitored as they set new personal highs in innings pitched.

So these trades for relievers aren’t just meatball surgery to try to make a terrible bullpen passable. The bullpen is probably going to have to set the pace in this final third of the season. There are going to be games where they’re going to be penciled to pitch four innings. There are going to be times where Kelly is going to have to chase a deficit and use good relievers when losing. This is a unit that was one of the worst in baseball a week ago, and now this has to not only be good, they probably need to be great to get into October.

I think this group does have the potential to be great. Weaver is a stud. Doval is an obvious change of scenery candidate with tremendous upside. Yates brings veteran leadership, and Bachar can go multiple innings. That’s about as good a quartet as one could have realistically hoped for, and there were already a couple lefties contributing to this group. It might not be the Shark Tank, but there’s some actual upside here. If nothing else, Kelly finally has real relievers to work with, rather than throwing Minor League starters into high-leverage spots and hoping for the best.

This bullpen needed to be pedestrian for the first four months of the season. They failed. Now they need to be great. Time will tell if they can.

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The bullpen has been the Pirates’ most glaring weakness all season. They have already allowed more runs between the seventh and ninth innings this year (190) than they did in all of 2025 (189), and the third-most runs in those late innings in baseball. They have blown 20 saves compared to converting just 21. Their 24 bullpen losses are the second most in the National League. Dennis Santana and Justin Lawrence were supposed to be late-inning options for this club, and both have been designated for assignment.

It’s a pretty grim outlook, and the additions of Hunter Stratton and Brandon Eisert haven’t helped (and neither is currently with the Major League team). Saturday’s trade for Camilo Doval is definitely a bigger swing, acquiring a 2023 All-Star with one of the liveliest fastballs in the game, averaging 98.6 mph. He has 109 career saves and plenty of experiencing pitching leverage innings, something that this bullpen desperately needs.

He has not had a good year, pitching to a 4.54 ERA over 39 ⅔ innings with 39 strikeouts, amounting to -0.8 WAR according to Baseball Reference. There’s a reason why the Yankees were willing to part with one of their biggest acquisitions from the 2025 Deadline for pennies on the dollar, only getting back prospect catcher Omar Alfonzo and outfielder Luis Ruiz in exchange. He’s a change of scenery candidate who you can keep via arbitration in 2027 if he pans out or let go for free this winter if he doesn’t. The Pirates aren’t assuming a lot of risk here. Heck, the Yankees are even paying down some of Doval’s salary.

The Pirates didn’t have to trade any top prospects and should still have financial flexibility to continue to add to the bullpen. Assuming they do add more bullpen help, it’s hard to hate this deal. If they don’t add more, then this move doesn’t do enough to fix the bullpen’s myriad of problems, one of the most obvious being this unit can’t get left-handed hitters out.

This is a pretty left-handed bullpen, with Gregory Soto being the de facto closer, Mason Montgomery emerging as one of Don Kelly’s leverage arms, Evan Sisk as the modern take on a LOOGY and Eisert as one of their few in-season additions. Despite having a bullpen that has been half-lefty for portions of this season, MLB left-handed hitters have the sixth-highest wOBA (.336) and third-highest xwOBA (.342) against the Pirates’ bullpen. The bullpen’s 13.4% walk rate against lefties is the third-highest in baseball, and their .353 on-base percentage allowed is the fourth-highest.

How is that possible with all of those lefties in the bullpen? Because the right-handers have been downright bad against southpaw swingers. Sure, some blame belongs on guys like Santana and Lawrence, but Yohan Ramírez – who has been their best reliever who doesn’t need three days between outings – has allowed lefties to get on base at a .397 clip. Isaac Mattson has a .390 OBP allowed to lefties. Newcomer Ron Marianccio has a .265/.363/.429 slash line against left-handers. This bullpen needs a right-hander without these profound hand splits.

Doval is not that guy. Lefty hitters have a .360/.425/.573 slash line against him this season, equating to a .999 OPS. He has worse hand splits than even Ramírez and Mattson. Going by sOPS+, which weighs a split compared to the league average, he has had as much success against left-handers as Justin Lawrence (168 sOPS+ for Lawrence, 167 for Doval). To put in layman’s terms, lefty hitters produced 68% more offense than league average against Lawrence and 67% more against Doval.

Maybe getting him out of Yankee Stadium will do him so good and make that split less apparent. He had a 7.08 ERA and a .962 OPS allowed in 20 ⅓ innings at home compared to a 1.86 ERA and .456 OPS allowed over 19 ⅓ innings on the road. Those sample sizes are small enough that it could be coincidental, but the results are profound enough to label him a change of scenery candidate.

The sinker is still a power pitch. It has elite velocity and has held hitters to a .233 batting average against with a .283 wOBA. He has that foundation to work with, but his cutter has devolved in recent years, with hitters batting .344 against it with a .382 wOBA. For someone who threw his slider 48% of the time last year to good results, I’m not sure why he leaned into the cutter in 2026. Sure, he throws the pitch harder than anyone in baseball, but it’s not getting hitters out and it’s being thrown in the same lane as his sinker to left-handers. His sinker drops and the cutter stays up. If I’m a hitter knowing that his fastball is probably going to be on his hand side, and the fastball is going to bite down and the cutter is going to hang up, why would you ever guess it’s a sinker?

Maybe the cutter is making the sinker play a little better because hitters are hunting pitches up, but I don’t really see its appeal. He throws both pitches in the zone the same amount. There’s over 100 points of batting average difference between the two pitches. My first instinct is to slash the cutter usage, if not ditch the pitch entirely.

Still, at this acquisition cost, this is a risk worth taking. Alfonzo is an intriguing prospect that probably didn’t have much of a path to Pittsburgh. He’s a toolsy catcher with an interesting enough bat that he could make it to the Majors as a backstop one day. He’s probably a future backup or journeyman catcher whose career prospects may depend on how often he can put a ball over the Yankee Stadium right field porch. The Pirates didn’t protect him from the Rule 5 Draft last winter and he’s eligible for Minor League free agency after 2027 (according to MLB Spreadsheets), so I don’t think he had much of a future with the organization behind Endy Rodríguez, Henry Davis and Rafael Flores Jr., and they were at risk of losing him for nothing pretty soon. Cruz is an 18-year-old outfielder with 57 games of Dominican Summer League ball under his belt. He’s a lottery ticket at most.

Doval screams reclamation project and still has the stuff that made him an All-Star three years ago and a top deadline target last year. A pitch mix tweak could make a big difference. Maybe he could be a late-inning platoon partner with Soto. If there are more lefties due up, go to Soto. If there are three right-handers, it’s Doval’s inning. If nothing else, Kelly now has another established reliever that he can turn to late, rather than going to Wilber Dotel to protect an eighth inning lead like Friday night.

But this can’t be the bullpen’s big move. They still have a very obvious hole: a closer, or at the very least someone you can turn to late regardless of if it’s a righty or lefty hitting. And the clock is ticking to get that deal done.

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The Pirates are in desperate need for bullpen help. They also needed some shortstop depth now that Konnor Griffin is on the 60-day injured list. They also had a Competitive Balance Round A pick burning a hole in their pocket, a free tradeable asset the league gifted them. With the Draft set to start Saturday, the Pirates had a choice to make: use the Draft pick and hope it yields a Major League player years from now, or try to flip it and add to the 2026 club.

They chose the latter, sending that pick and Minor League lefty reliever Jaden Woods to the White Sox for lefty reliever Brandon Eisert and infielder Jacob Gonzalez. Both are still pre-arb players with years of team control remaining, so consider this a hedged bet. They’re missing out on a potential high quality prospect, but they’re getting two Major League players with lower ceilings who could help now.

That is, of course, assuming they actually do make this team better, which is far from a guarantee. The White Sox are a first place club and weren’t going to deal away their best impact players. These two are still in search of a true Major League breakout.

Eisert, 28, has pitched to a 5.93 ERA over 27 ⅓ Major League innings this season, striking out 32 against eight walks. He averages only 89.7 mph on his fastball, but has a healthy 31.2% whiff rate, strikes out 27.4% of his batters faced and has a 3.41 expected ERA, according to Baseball Savant. He also gets good extension on his delivery (7.2 feet, putting him in the 95th percentile of pitchers), and we all know the Pirates love a soft-tossing lefty with a mechanical quirk.

Eisert has a four-pitch mix that’s centered around his four-seam fastball and slider. He will also throw a changeup to right-handers and a sinker to left-handers. The sinker and slider could potentially create a nice tunnel, but only if the sinker will, well, sink:

That’s not going to play. The slider and changeup do land in some pretty nasty zones and produce whiff rates of over 30% each, but batters are slugging .500 against his breaking ball and are hitting .280 against his changeup. The Pirates are buying a pitcher who has some good traits and peripherals and are hoping he can mask his 80-something mph fastballs to realize that potential. So far, that hasn’t really happened in the Majors.

Gonzalez, 24, was the White Sox first round pick in 2023 and their No. 22 prospect, according to MLB Pipeline. He has slashed .244/.323/.360 with two home runs in his first 97 Major League plate appearances but has done much better in Triple-A, where he has hit 19 home runs with a .320 batting average and 1.097 OPS. The catch is Charlotte is one of the best hitting environments on the east coast. He hit .374 with 16 home runs and an .897 slugging percentage at home in the minors, compared to a .253 batting average, .407 slugging clip and three homers on the road. That’s a pretty daunting split.

Gonzalez is far from a finished product but I do think there are some development opportunities here. My immediate takeaway is it takes awhile to get to his load position. I’ve had conversations with Griffin and Endy Rodríguez this season about how they were able to improve their timing by getting their hands to a more optimal position sooner. When I look at swings like this foul ball against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, I’m struck by how far Yamamoto is in his delivery while Gonzalez is still getting in position to hit. It makes sense why he would be late for a belt-high 96 mph fastball:

I think Gonzalez has decent bat speed and the potential to grow, and this is an area where you can improve in-season. He’s batting .220 with a .293 slugging percentage against fastballs in the Majors. If he can improve there, then I could see him being a big leaguer.

So the Pirates acquired two projects. Was it worth what they traded?

It’s hard to say exactly how much trade value a draft pick has. We’ve had plenty of trades involving Competitive Balance selections the last few years, but they’re usually paired with other players. Looking at some recent examples, the Guardians flipped an unranked prospect and the 29th pick in this Draft for the light-hitting but Gold Glove-winning catcher Patrick Bailey this May. The Rays acquired Bryan Baker – who now has 25 saves in Tampa – for their Competitive Balance pick last year, but he was hardly a closer in waiting at the time of the deal. Picks have been part of trade packages for Quinn Priester, Jeffery Springs and Gavin Lux in recent years, but rarely do you see a true one-for-one style swap of a player for a pick.

Acquiring a draft pick gives a team an extra selection, but perhaps more importantly, it gives them bonus pool money to spend. The No. 34 pick carried a slot value of almost $2.9 million. A team could draft a player who could sign for roughly that expected value, but they could go over-slot on a high school player or reach for a lesser draft prospect and spread the money around later. Depending on what player is selected and the strength of a given farm system, my back of the envelope estimate is this pick will probably yield a player who lands somewhere in the 7-13 range for a top prospect list. That’s either near the end of a club’s second tier of prospects or the start of that third tier, with the new club footing the signing bonus bill.

So if you want to know if this is a fair trade, it looks fairly even, perhaps leaning a bit towards a slight overpay by the Pirates. Eisert for Woods is a swap of lefty relievers, with the Pirates getting a more proven player with intriguing peripherals but probably a lower ceiling, and losing a harder thrower with a higher ceiling but lower floor. They flipped a pick that should yield a higher ranked prospect than Gonzalez, but Gonzalez is Major League-ready, fills an immediate need and the Pirates have an extra $2.9 million in their pocket that they could use elsewhere this deadline.

It might be a fairly even trade, but it’s fair to be underwhelmed. This team is in desperate need of a spark to finally get over this .500ish hump they’ve been at all season. This move doesn’t inspire much excitement.

I don’t think you have to squint very hard to see how this trade could work out for the Pirates. Eisert produces results closer to what his peripherals suggest they should be and Gonzalez turns into half of a perfectly cromulent substitute platoon with Jared Triolo at shortstop for the next two months. In a perfect world, maybe he’s a legitimate candidate to replace Brandon Lowe at second base next year. Eisert probably improves the bullpen day one, but that’s not a very high bar to clear, and if you’re buying xERA, all three southpaws in the Pirates’ bullpen have a better xERA than he does.

This doesn’t scream “big deadline move,” but every trade doesn’t have to. This reaffirms the Pirates are positioning themselves as buyers at the deadline, but this is a pretty risk-averse move. If they crater and are forced to sell, these guys could help the 2027 team still.

If you’re looking for a big swing to try to get this team out of this .500 purgatory they’ve played in all season, well, maybe the cash they’re saving here and on the Joey Bart trade can make a difference.

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Pulling Jared Jones after six perfect innings Wednesday was a thankless, unpopular and correct decision by Don Kelly. This is a pivotal homestand ahead of the All-Star break and Jones delivered the best start of his young Major League career, striking out eight without allowing a base runner over 77 pitches.

Ideally, you let Jones go out for at least the seventh inning and see where the outing takes him. Jones isn’t living in an ideal pitching world right now. He’s going to be heavily monitored and the Pirates are going to often err on the side of caution in his first year back from an internal brace surgery on his right elbow. Kelly said postgame that Jones’ limits were five ups and 80 pitches, but since he was so efficient through those first five innings, they let him go the extra frame.

“His health is too important and having not even approached anything like nine innings and him at 80 pitches in essence already, you’re looking at 120 coming off of surgery,” Kelly explained. “There was no way [he could pitch the whole game].”

I get that it’s frustrating to see Jones give up the ball amid a chance at history. It’s worse when you consider that Jones is handing the ball off to a bad bullpen.

Since the start of June, the Pirates’ bullpen has produced a 5.11 ERA with eight losses and five blown saves against six successful saves. Their collective -1.24 Win Probability Added is 24th in baseball in that timeframe, according to FanGraphs. The only relievers who have made at least four appearances since the start of June with an ERA under 5.00 are Evan Sisk (3.97 ERA and currently on the injured list), Yohan Ramírez (1.10 ERA) and the recently reassigned reliever Carmen Mlodzinski (1.99 ERA).

Getting Mlodzinski back to the bullpen was more of an ordeal than expected, but he has pitched well out of that role. He was arguably their second-most valuable bullpen arm from 2023-2025 (behind David Bednar), and given the state of this bullpen, his addition in 2026 was the best internal move the Pirates could have made to improve the unit.

It did come with a few caveats, the most apparent being that Mlodzinski isn’t on a normal reliever’s schedule. As Ben Cherington explained to media on Wednesday, the day after Mlodzinski pitches, he and pitching coach Bill Murphy meet to determine how many recovery days he needs before he is eligible to pitch again. Once he’s had those recovery days, he’s available.

There is some “fluidity,” as Cherington put it, to when Mlodzinski can pitch. If he’s first available on Monday, for example, Kelly can wait to pitch him on Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever. The downside of that is if you wait until Wednesday, you’re going to be pushing back that potential next outing by two days. He has gone at least four days between every outing.

It creates a “smoke if you’ve got ‘em” mindset. The Pirates need to get the most out of Mlodzinski. The best way to do that is to pitch him the most amount of innings, right?

Since the start of June when Mlodzinski became a reliever again, he is third among MLB relievers with 22 ⅔ innings pitched. He has a sub-2.00 ERA in that frame. You would assume he would be one of the game’s most valuable relievers this last month or so. According to FanGraphs, he is 48th in Win Probability Added (0.42).

Mlodzinski just isn’t pitching in many leverage spots. He’s made eight relief appearances this year. In most of them, the game was pretty close to being decided already:

On three occasions the Pirates had a 94% chance or greater of winning when he entered the game. In another it was just 7%. He made a real impact on the Pirates’ chances of winning on June 28 and July 2, but even then, the Pirates ended up winning by five runs twice anyway because of some late offensive heroics. You can make a legitimate claim that Mlodzinski hasn’t been the difference between a win or loss in any of these eight games pitched.

Meanwhile, in the two losses Mlodzinski has pitched in (June 15 and June 20), the Pirates twice needed lengthy outings from their bullpen the next day. On June 16, they cobbled together 3 ⅔ scoreless innings of relief to beat the Athletics, and on June 21, they allowed four runs over six innings to hang on against the Rockies. They won both games, albeit barely and in the type of games where having a stud multi-inning reliever could have truly helped. Of course, there was no way of knowing if Mlodzinski would be needed in either of those games. What’s a better way of using your best reliever: when you’re down 2-1 in the bottom of the seventh in Colorado or hoping he can make an impact at a later day, knowing you’re going to be leaving innings he could have thrown on the table?

This brings us back to Wednesday. Tuesday’s game was decided before Mlodzinski even started getting warmed up, entering the bottom of the fifth with a 96% win probability. Kelly knew he would need middle relievers Wednesday. It’s easy to say he mismanaged this – for what it’s worth, I think he did – but pitching Mlodzinski Tuesday would ensure he would pitch again before the break, with some presumed flexibility on which game he could pitch. If Wednesday was a blowout loss, Kelly might have to choose between burning Mlodzinski in essentially worthless innings or accept he’s only going to pitch once during the homestand. Pitching him Tuesday at least ensured the rest of the bullpen could get a breather ahead of this final push before the break.

Is it better to pitch in a low leverage spot and hope he could be eligible for a higher impact role later in the week, or just hope there will be a high leverage spot at some point and wait to pitch him then? What’s better, having Mlodzinski throw as many innings as possible and hope the leverage lines up, or pitch him in only higher leverage spots and accept that your bullpen’s B-team is going to throw even more innings?

It’s unrealistic to expect Mlodzinski to be available every game. No reliever is. But this system of needing so many recovery days between outings makes him far less valuable of a reliever. Andrew Miller was the most valuable reliever in baseball for years because he could pitch multiple innings or shut down hitters for just one big frame. Mlodzinski could be that type of guy too, but only if he’s available more often.

But it doesn’t seem like a role change or back-to-back outings are on the table anytime soon.

“We feel like the role he’s in now is really, really valuable,” Cherington said. “If we can figure out the pitching staff in a way that allows him to stay in that role, we see a lot of value in that.”

It can be valuable, but only if he pitches in valuable innings.

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Mark Redman was pretty lousy as a Pirate. Acquired from the Oakland Athletics during the winter of 2004 as part of a Jason Kendall salary dump, Redman was an inning eater who was brought in to make 30 starts for a team that had no chance of contending. Redman delivered 178 ⅓ innings and a 4.90 ERA for a team that lost 95 games and had only three starting pitchers who had a positive WAR (including his 0.6 WAR). They failed to find a taker for him come the trade deadline, so Redman finished his Pirate career as the starting pitcher of nine straight losses.

I’m bringing up a forgettable lefty not just for a trip down memory lane, but as a benchmark of the state of the franchise and the type of pitcher it took for them to lose nine straight starts. It was the last time a Pirate pitcher started nine straight losses in a single season, up until Wednesday night.

Paul Skenes had the worst outing of his career Wednesday in Philadelphia, allowing eight runs (seven earned) over four innings, and for the ninth straight time, the Pirates lost. For a team that has October aspirations (period, full stop), they are 6-12 when he pitches and 37-32 the rest of the time (an 87-win pace). There’s absolutely some randomness at play here, but he has a 5.36 ERA over this losing streak. He’s hardly blameless.

As this streak has stretched on, the chatter around Skenes’ performance has gotten louder. Some analytics suggest he’s just been unlucky. No pitcher has had worse defensive performance behind him. His left on base percentage – something that does have some randomness to it – has drastically dropped. Going into Wednesday, his FIP and WHIP were basically in line with last year’s numbers.

At the same time, there are red flags. Dipping fastball velocities, inconsistent breaking pitches and a pitcher who has looked on in frustration more times in this stretch than we saw all of last season. On each of his last four start days, I’ve gotten a text from a media member or league source asking if I know what’s off.

Well, I don’t. I do have thoughts, though. It’s been a nine game losing streak. I can come up with nine thoughts on the Pirates’ stumbling ace.

1. The drop in velocity is concerning. He claims that it’s “been by design” that he’s not throwing 100 mph anymore, and I can buy that to a certain extent. It can’t be by design that his fastball velocity has dropped every month this season:

Skenes’ four-seam fastball averaged 96.3 mph Wednesday, tied for the lowest in a game in his career (last done on May 12 against the Rockies, his last win). I don’t think he necessarily needs to throw 100 to be effective, but there’s a big difference from consistently averaging between 98-99 mph a start in 2025 to not once averaging 98 mph in a game this year.

The safe guess is something is off mechanically. I can’t say what it is for sure. His arm angle has risen, and we’ve seen Bubba Chandler start to pitch better once he got back to his normal arm slot. The difference is Chandler’s arm slot rose over 10 degrees. Skenes’ is up only a couple degrees, so it could still be within the normal variance pitchers usually fluctuate between. This is probably more a side effect than it is the root cause:

Rob Friedman (AKA the Pitching Ninja) made a side-by-side comparison of a 100 mph fastball from 2025 to a 94 mph fastball this season, and I believe it illustrates a real issue: Skenes isn’t keeping his pelvis up.

We’ve seen Mitch Keller lose and gain a couple mph over the course of the season depending on his pelvis positioning, and I know it’s something Oscar Marin would always be mindful of with his pitchers. He’s not creating as much potential energy with his midsection, and with the extra arm movement, he’s potentially losing potential energy in his delivery.

2. Here are the two pitches that caused me the most pause Wednesday. Maybe the worst back-to-back pitches I’ve ever seen Skenes throw.

Facing Gabriel Rincones Jr. in the second inning with runners on the corners and one out, Skenes went with the four-seamer on a 3-2 count. Henry Davis’ PitchCom has (or at least had as of last year) a prompt called “doors.” Blow the doors off this guy. I’d hazard a guess that’s what he called here. Skenes revved up his fastball and it sailed on him. Ball four.

Justin Crawford came up next. Skenes again went to the fastball, and again it sailed for an easy take.

The first pitch was clocked at 97.2 mph, within the normal variance of what we’ve seen this year. The second was 95.8 mph. The first looked like he wanted to just overpower his opponent. I like the mindset. He didn’t execute. The second looked like he was calling mulligan. He would get a quick strike and then try to pitch away to get a double play. He flies open again and he finds himself down 1-0. Crawford would get an RBI on the next pitch and the inning and outing spiraled.

You just don’t see Skenes miss like that, let alone twice in a row. If this was a moment where he really wanted to just blow the ball by the hitter and he’s only touching 96-97, then the lesser fastball velo just became a bigger problem.

3. How the splinker has fallen. Once the most devastating pitch in baseball, batters came into Wednesday hitting .359 against it. Skenes threw it 13 times on Wednesday, resulting in no whiffs and no called strikes. Bryce Harper hit an RBI double off it and Crawford hit a ball 104 mph for a lineout.

I remember chatting with a source last year about how if we could throw 100 with that splinker, neither of us would throw anything else. The times have changed. The changeup has risen and has become his second-most used pitch, and the splinker went on the backburner.

That was until Wednesday.

Skenes threw only four changeups Wednesday, the fewest he’s had in a game since April 8, 2025. It was clear that he was throwing the splinker as his offspeed pitch instead, which is interesting because back in 2024, he threw the splinker like it was a sinker. “It’s funny to see guys swing at fastballs in the dirt,” Skenes told me in 2024.

Of course, he didn’t have a true sinker then. When he did add the sinker, the splinker became less deadly. You can’t really throw a hybrid half-sinker like a fastball when you have a true sinking fastball.

So he threw it like an offspeed pitch Wednesday. The results were bad, albeit in a limited sample size. Let’s see if this was a one-start experiment, or if he will go back to the changeup the next time.

4. For what it’s worth, I don’t really like his changeup. He throws it in a good lane and it gets decent results (a .221 xWOBA and 39.6% whiff rate are both really solid), but it doesn’t play off the movement profile of any of his secondary pitches and is really just a one trick pony. If he doesn’t beat you with the changeup, the changeup isn’t going to set up another pitch to beat you.

Skenes threw more changeups every month in 2025 and it’s his second-most thrown pitch in 2026. The splinker has the potential to be a much better pitch, but I don’t think he’s in a position to shelve a pitch that’s getting outs for a project.

5. So the fastball is slower and he’s potentially throwing his offspeed ball with different intent. How’s the breaking ball going?

That good, huh?

The sweeper is a mess right now. He hasn’t been locating it to his glove side consistently the last couple weeks, and on Wednesday, he didn’t even bury it in the zone. Everything stayed belt high, like that Trea Turner blast.

The sweeper had a 26.9% whiff rate on pitches in the zone last year. It’s just 19.5% this season. It had a 26.8% chase rate in 2025, which has dropped to 18.3% this year. If he’s not beating hitters in the zone with his primary breaking ball and he’s not getting them to chase it out of the zone, what’s the path to success with the pitch? Getting weak contact and quick outs? That’s not what the sweeper is designed to do. It’s a whiff pitch first.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence we’ve seen the old-fashioned slider return in recent weeks, trying to get some more vertical drop on his breaking ball, but Brandon Marsh put a slider in the seats Wednesday too. He needs to be able to either get hitters to chase it away or whiff at the bottom of the zone.

6. It was at this point last year that we started to see Skenes start to do some five-and-dive starts to manage his innings. The Pirates wanted him to pitch through a whole season for the first time, and they built in a light midseason breather around the All-Star Game.

I understand the immense hesitation to have Skenes bow out after five innings and hand the ball over to this bullpen, but maybe he needs a get-right outing or two. Don’t worry about trying to throw 100 pitches over seven innings. Just let it eat for a couple frames and Carmen Mlodzinski will take it from there.

7. Are we ever going to see this curveball? It was his big offseason project and had a new movement profile, and he’s thrown it all of 10 times this season.

I suppose you could argue the slider gives him a breaking ball with a little more downward bite, but if he isn’t landing pitches east-to-west, you have to consider the north-to-south options. He’s really only thrown it to left-handers the past few years, and the changeup has become a go-to pitch for him this year. He can still throw it to right-handers, even if it’s a waste pitch to try to change the eyeline.

Hey, I’m just throwing stuff up against the wall and seeing what sticks, but this seems like a very weird omission considering how it was a decent part of his pitch mix in 2024 and how it got retooled this winter.

8. I’m not buying the popular conspiracy theory that the World Baseball Classic caused this slump. If Skenes had a blister that cost him a few weeks of Spring Training, nobody would still be citing that interruption as the reason for his troubles now.

MLB teams work with WBC clubs to set guidelines for how pitchers can be used. Nobody went rogue. He didn’t throw 130 pitches in a game. What he did at the WBC was all approved and not too different from regular Spring Training starts.

I’d be more willing to buy this if Skenes never found his footing, but he had a sub-2.00 ERA before this losing streak. That doesn’t sound like a pitcher who was suffering from an interrupted spring.

9. So do you want my conspiracy theory?

This is purely speculation on my part, but Skenes is coming off of the first real six-month pitching season of his career. His April in 2024 was his Spring Training, slowly building up his innings in Triple-A. Before that, his pitching career consisted of one season at LSU, one as a starter for the Air Force Academy and one as their catcher and closer. He was mostly a catcher in high school and his early collegiate days. He came to Pittsburgh without a lot of pitching miles on his body, but he also hadn’t been built up and conditioned for years like every other young pitcher who came up through their farm system.

I can’t help but wonder if the jump to 187 ⅔ innings in 2025 was greater than expected and he didn’t condition enough this winter to fully recover and prep for the year ahead. I don’t want to imply he was lazy, but the curse of being a unicorn is you don’t really have a playbook to work from. There are going to be times where you have to figure stuff out the hard way. What worked to condition back after 160 innings, most of which were over four months, is different from a more evenly distributed 190ish innings over six months.

Again, it’s just a theory. If it’s right, that’s a potentially ominous sign for the rest of the season.

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We are just over the halfway point of the season and the Pirates have a 42-42 record. I don’t think many would have been surprised if you said at the start of the year that the Pirates would be a .500 club at this point of the season, but I don’t think anyone would have expected it to come this way. The offense is a top five unit while the rotation has only been average and the bullpen a mess? Who genuinely saw that coming?

At least now we have a better understanding of what these 2026 Pirates are like. So let’s have a reset and reevaluate some key figures down the stretch. Some are trending in the right direction, others have not lived up to expectations. Will that continue?

These are four players that I’m either buying or selling for the second half of the season.

BUYING: Endy Rodríguez’s run

Rodríguez was once viewed as the catcher of the future, but elbow injuries sidelined him for almost all of 2024 and 2025. That’s a tough blow for any young player’s development, not just because they missed out on that many games, but because you also have to budget time for them to get acclimated back to Major League speed. That’s a lot easier said than done.

His showing in the Majors wasn’t exactly encouraging, either. He looked like a guy who didn’t play much ball in 2024 and finished with a .496 OPS over 18 Major League games. He never got his timing back.

This Spring Training, he was approached by a coach with a suggestion. Rodríguez used to have a leg kick in the minors but ditched it in 2023 when he was on the precipice of the Majors. He readopted the kick in 2025, so the coach suggested what if he went with a smaller toe tap instead.

Rodríguez tried it out and found it was easier to time up pitchers and get his body in the right spot to hit.

“It was easier for me to adjust to boys throwing 100 mph now,” Rodríguez explained to me. “You’ve got to be more simple… you’ve got to be on time and keep it simple.”

There’s also less hand movement this year. Rodríguez used to hold his bat at a lower spot when waiting for a pitch, having the bat almost laying on his back. When the pitch would come in, he would move the hands to his load. Now his bat doesn’t move as much and he keeps his hands closer to his load, eliminating some motion and simplifying the approach.

“Sometimes (changes) take a long time, but that was pretty quick,” Rodríguez said about how long it took for his quieter hands to feel natural.

Rodríguez has looked on time since coming back to the Majors, getting the contact point out in front while also being able to lay off more pitches out of the zone. That’s resulted in a .256/.384/.439 slash line with three home runs over 100 plate appearances. This is the best run he’s had since that 2022 campaign.

Rodríguez is pulling fly balls and buoying his OPS with a 17% walk rate. The changes he’s made are helping him time up pitchers and they feel natural to him now. I think that makes this level of success sustainable.

SELLING: A Marcell Ozuna turnaround

Look, people are saying the right things. Don Kelly is standing by his veteran DH.

“Honestly, on the road trip, he had really good at-bats, and we’ve started to see him come out of it,” Kelly said Tuesday. “I think we’re gonna start to see a different Marcell Ozuna.”

Ozuna seems to be in a better head space too.

“It’s not pressure,” Ozuna said on June 23. “I’m just trying not to hit it too hard. I was overdoing it. So I’ll just get my hits, have good at-bats and it will work out.”

And he’s even hitting after his lengthy absence from the everyday lineup. He’s gone 6-for-19 with two home runs in five games since June 17. So is he back?

Well, ignoring that he has only taken 23 plate appearances since June 10 and has mostly been on platoon duty of late, I still see red flags in his game. His 36.6% whiff rate in June is the highest it’s ever been in a month of his career. His 36.4% hard hit rate in June is the second-lowest clip he’s had in a month since 2023. I get that the sample size is smaller in June compared to other months, but he’s not hitting the ball as hard and he’s making contact less frequently. Those are supposed to be signs for a breakout.

I could keep going, or I could just show these charts on how he’s trending.

Perhaps Ozuna could be a fine platoon down the stretch. I don’t see much potential beyond that. There’s always been a lot of motion with his front foot and getting it down in time could be tougher with sporadic reps, so I’m still expecting plenty of whiffs and strikeouts. His walk rate and batting average on balls in play haven’t been this low since 2022. Maybe he could run into enough home runs to save his OPS, but at 35 years old and coming off of a 21 homer season in 2025, I’m doubtful. If he’s a platoon, it’s better than nothing, but I think there’s a far better chance than not that Ozuna finishes the year as a below replacement level player.

BUYING: Bubba Chandler bounce back

Chandler’s rookie season has been a mixed bag. We’ve seen some elite velocity with his fastball, a new sweeper and continued development with his changeup. He’s also had serious control issues, leading the league with 46 walks.

I took a deep dive into Chandler’s mechanics on May 18 and theorized that his arm angle had become too high. It was about that point where we saw that arm angle finally start to come down, and now it’s back to what we saw last year:

Chatting with Chandler, his arm slot is in a more comfortable spot now than the beginning of the year. He declined to go into too much detail about what went into that rising arm angle, but he feels good now.

“I think your body just changes at the beginning of the year,” Chandler said to me. “At the beginning of the year, for most of the year, I was dealing with some things that I wouldn’t normally have to deal with, but it’s the part of the year where we just have to get by. But now I feel better. I think the body is a lot more natural now.”

Since May 22, which is when we saw the arm angle go back down to about what we saw last season, Chandler has pitched to a 3.62 ERA and 3.26 FIP over 37 ⅓ innings across seven appearances, striking out 37 and walking 15. For reference, he had 36 strikeouts and 31 walks with a 5.14 ERA over 42 innings and nine outings to start the season.

Fastball command is the key here. He pitches off of that heater, and he needs to be able to ride it at the top of the zone. Here’s where his four-seamer was landing in his first nine starts:

And here is his heatmap over his last seven with the lower slot:

This is where the fastball needs to land, right at the letters. He’s also landing it for strikes more frequently, going from a 48.4% in-zone rate for his fastballs with the old angle to 55.3% with the new.

We’ve still seen Chandler lose his command at times mid-start, but he’s throwing from a more comfortable slot, landing more strikes and walking fewer batters. He needs to keep doing that, and while some hiccups could still be expected, the overall body of work is much better.

SELLING: A Paul Skenes top three Cy Young finish

Skenes immediately took the league by storm in 2024, winning Rookie of the Year and finishing third in Cy Young voting. Had he been in the Majors the entire season, he probably would have won both awards. He entered 2025 as the overwhelming favorite to win the Cy Young and took home the hardware. Expectations were that he would repeat as the National League’s top pitcher, or at least be a finalist again.

That’s not looking too likely right now. The National League has some incredible pitching. Cristopher Sánchez should get the start at his home ballpark for the All-Star Game. Jacob Misiorowski has a 1.45 ERA and is hitting velocities we’ve never before seen from a starter. Max Meyer is a perfect 9-0 for the upstart Marlins. Chase Burns is electric. Shohei Ohtani is having his best pitching season.

The list just continues. There are 11 National League pitchers who are currently on pace for 5 WAR, according to Baseball Reference. We haven’t had that many pitchers hit that mark since 1969. This has the potential to be the greatest seasons of pitching league-wide in our lifetimes.

And Skenes just hasn’t been part of that top tier this season. He’s tied for 12th in the National League in WAR (2.2), 13th in ERA (3.10) and 14th in innings pitched (93). The only major pitching stats where he ranks in the top three in the NL are strikeouts per nine innings (11 K/9), WHIP (0.97), games started (17) and losses (7).

Skenes’ WHIP is basically what we’ve seen the last two years and his FIP isn’t too much higher, so one could argue any concerns over his performance are overstated. I don’t want to cry that the sky is falling, but he simply hasn’t been the same pitcher we saw in 2024 and 2025.

Skenes is one of 14 qualified National League pitchers whose fastball velocity has dipped at least 1 mph from 2025, according to Baseball Savant (Mitch Keller and Carmen Mlodzinski are two others). He recently told José Negron of DK Pittsburgh Sports that velo dip has “been by design,” but it’s still a pretty drastic drop. The splinker was his best pitch in 2024 and it has become a non-factor, as he’s using it less and hitters are batting .359 off it. The sweeper was his best pitch in 2025 and it’s getting fewer chases out of the zone (26.8% to 18.3%) and whiffs in the zone (26.9% to 20.8%). He’s turning into more of a four-seam and changeup guy, and the changeup only plays on that low corner to his hand side. He’s become a lot more predictable on the mound.

I think Skenes will finish with a season that 90-something percent of pitchers would love to have but is noticeably lesser than his first two. Unless he finds that extra gear again, I could see him being left off Cy Young ballots in this crowded field. He has not gotten better this season.

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The Pirates are in desperate need of a bullpen overhaul. They came into the year counting on Dennis Santana and Justin Lawrence being key late inning arms. The former has a 4.50 ERA and the latter has been designated for assignment and traded. No left-hander in baseball has allowed more inherited runners to score than Evan Sisk. Since being demoted to the bullpen, Carmen Mlodzinski has become a glorified inning eater who has seemingly maintained his starter schedule, watching from the sidelines as his team has blown several games in the middle innings this month. When Mlodzinski has pitched of late, it’s been terrible, allowing 11 runs in 10 ⅔ innings out of the bullpen. Things have gotten so dire that Don Kelly has gone to 23-year-old rookie Wilber Dotel (a starting pitcher throughout most of his pro career) in clutch spots multiple times, to the point that losing Dotel to the injured list was a fairly major blow to the unit.

I try not to start an article with a word avalanche of a first paragraph, but my goodness, how else would you dissect this bullpen?

Things only got worse in June. No bullpen has allowed more runs in June than the Pirates’. Their -1.20 Win Probability Added in June is 27th in baseball. If things were bad beforehand, this month has been a nosedive that could very well cost this team a trip to the postseason if not rectified.

That’s why it wasn’t too surprising whenever the Pirates acquired right-hander Hunter Stratton Thursday night. He’s a familiar face, having pitched parts of 2023-2025 with the club while posting a 3.75 ERA over 69 ⅔ Major League innings. His cutter generates weak contact and the slider can get whiffs. He’s not going to fix this bullpen by himself, but salvaging this shark-less tank is not a one-person deal. If this is just the first of 3-5 bullpen additions over the next six weeks, adding him as an up-down guy between Indianapolis and the Majors is a fine pickup.

What made this trade particularly interesting is that the Pirates sent Joey Bart to Atlanta to acquire Stratton. Normally players who are designated for assignment and traded, like Stratton, bring back something minor: cash considerations, a low-level prospect, perhaps a different player who had just been DFA’d. Bart was close to completing his rehab assignment and a roster decision was due of who the Pirates’ two catchers would be. We now have the answer.

So the Pirates’ first trade for bullpen help this year isn’t a move defined by their desire to get better relievers. It’s a move that announces that they are going to roll with Endy Rodríguez and Henry Davis as their catchers, opting for their risks and rewards over Bart’s higher floor but lower ceiling.

Rodríguez has only taken 76 Major League plate appearances this year, but the results have been terrific, slashing .267/.413/.467 with three home runs. He’s getting his front foot down and isn’t chasing fastballs out of the zone (12.2% chase rate compared to 19.6% as a rookie in 2023). He’s drawing walks and flashing power. This is the hitter fans hoped he would become when he emerged as a top prospect in 2022.

Is it sustainable? I’m doubtful that he can maintain a 20% walk rate and he has room to grow against offspeed pitches, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that Rodríguez can be a plus hitter. If nothing else, after two years of him being on the injured list, they need to figure out if he’s part of their future or not, so you may as well play him.

I’m far less optimistic about Davis’ bat. He’ll run into a few, but his extra-base hits to the opposite field have been misplays of lazy fly balls. I’ve heard around the league that his work with force plates this winter wasn’t addressing his actual issues as a hitter. He gets the bat head too far to the pull side and he comes off the ball too quickly. There’s a reason why all of his hard contact is right down the line to left and his slug is dependent on a handful of those line drives just staying inside the foul pole. From what I’ve gathered, he needs a swing overhaul, and I just don’t see that happening in-season, regardless of if he’s in Pittsburgh, Indianapolis or at Driveline. This is probably what he is for at least the rest of 2026: the personal catcher to the reigning Cy Young and a backup after that.

Bart couldn’t really fill either role. He was a plus hitter in 2024, but his OPS dropped over 100 points in 2025 to .696. He needed a four-hit performance in his final game as a Pirate to get his OPS to .670 this year. He worked hard with pitchers to try to better understand their stuff and call a better game, but he was worth -11 defensive runs saved as a Pirate. Bart doesn’t have Rodríguez’s offensive upside or Davis’ defensive upside.

What he did offer was a floor. Rodríguez has had elbow injuries each of the last three years. At his worst, Bart will hit better than Davis’ .138 batting average. He’s not particularly exciting and I don’t know if he’s going to win you many games, but I don’t think he would lose you many games by himself. Evidently, the Pirates weren’t willing to spend another $1.2 million and change on their catcher room’s floor. They’d rather roll with what they have and have financial flexibility to invest elsewhere, like the bullpen.

Picking up Stratton was a nice little addition for a bullpen that needs all the help it can get. They’re also going all-in with their catchers. It might be the right bet, but they’re now just another Rodríguez injury away from rolling with Rafael Flores Jr. (79 wRC+ with Indianapolis) and Davis behind the plate. That could be catastrophic. But assuming every cent of that Bart money is reinvested in relievers, they have to roll the dice.

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At the risk of oversimplifying, you can divide Mitch Keller’s career into two portions. The first is his early career struggles, defined by control issues, hard contact and having the worst ERA in baseball. It wasn’t until Keller went to Tread Athletics and started throwing a sinker in late May 2022 that things started to turn around.

It was that start at Dodger Stadium in 2022 where we saw Keller emerge from that first phase of his career to this new era. One where he became an All-Star in 2023 and the highest-paid pitcher in franchise history in 2024. Keller is no longer the face or heart of the rotation, but he might be the kidneys, an indispensable part that keeps the body running. From that Dodger Stadium start in 2022 to the end of 2025, Keller threw the eighth most innings in baseball (669) and was 12th in fWAR (9.7), all while recording a very respectable 4.04 ERA.

So why the history lesson? On Thursday, Keller was pulled after allowing five runs over four innings. It was his third straight outing where he did not complete five innings. The last time that happened were his final outings leading up to his 2022 start at Dodger Stadium, the rebirth of his career.

Keller’s slump extends beyond these last three outings. He’s allowed 29 earned runs over his last six starts (the most he’s ever surrendered in a six outings stretch), while pitching only 30 innings. He has walked 13, hit five batters and allowed 39 hits in that stretch, raising his season ERA to 5.14.

“If I had the answer, I would have already done that,” Keller answered Thursday when asked how he can get back on track. “I’m just going to keep working every turn I can and hopefully it turns around here.”

It was against the Dodgers in 2022 that Keller broke out of his old shell. Facing the Dodgers again just over four years later, there were red flags of a pitcher who is regressing while looking for answers.

THE FASTBALL

Keller is averaging 93.4 mph on his four-seam fastball this season, the lowest of his Major League career. His velocity has been steadily dropping since that 2022 apex, but he was always able to supplement it with his sinker. The fastball might be a tick slower, but he could ride the four-seamer high and drop the sinker with similar spin profiles, keeping hitters off balance.

He doesn’t have that second fastball. On the year, hitters are batting .357 against his sinker. He’s gone from throwing it in the strike zone 59.4% of the time in 2025 to 50.2% in 2026. His ground ball rate on sinkers has dropped from 58% in his All-Star campaign in 2023 to 48.6% in 2026.

In the fourth inning Thursday, Keller got to a 2-2 count against Mookie Betts using sliders and sweepers, setting up the sinker to get out of the inning. Rafael Flores Jr. twice set up his target low and away, a spot where the sinker would be running away from Betts. Instead, Keller missed high and tight twice:

The four-seamer has always been Keller’s best strikeout pitch, but the sinker was how he got quick outs and it was a great tool to set up his sweeper and slider. Unlike the four-seamer, the sweeper and slider’s spin mirrors the sinker. He’s able to tunnel those pitches off of the sinker, and when he throws his sinker for strikes, he can get chases with the sweeper.

Keller didn’t break out because the sinker was this unhittable pitch. It made the rest of his arsenal play up while giving him a ground ball tool for quick outs. The sinker isn’t accomplishing either task right now, forcing him to rely more on a slower four-seamer.

THE OFFSPEED

For years, Keller used his cutter as a semi-changeup to left-handers. It had the velocity drop he was searching for, and since he wasn’t getting the downward bite he desired with the changeup, this offered some movement, albeit horizontal break instead of vertical.

It didn’t really work. Left-handers crushed Keller in 2024, especially in the second-half of the year, so he revamped the changeup that winter. He got a better movement profile, the pitch played better and he had improved results against lefties. After throwing 351 cutters in 2024, he threw just three in 2025.

This year, the changeup isn’t playing as well and the cutter started to return. On Thursday, he didn’t throw a changeup and instead threw 17 cutters, 16 of which were to left-handers.

I really don’t like this line of thinking. I don’t think Keller’s changeup is that particularly good, but it’s better in theory than the cutter. In a perfect world, a changeup will land on the low, outside corner, dropping on the hand side while not cutting in to a lefty hitter. A cutter against lefties would be jammed in on the hands so the hitter can’t fully extend. Looking at where Keller threw his cutters Thursday, very few landed in those spots, and they were instead out of the zone or center cut:

I get why Keller would toy with the cutter again. It used to be a big part of his arsenal, and it plays better off of the four-seamer. If he doesn’t have his sinker working, he has to look at what pitches play off of his other fastball. But if he’s not able to give the sweeper and slider the support they need, those pitches aren’t going to play, and his vast pitch mix becomes much more predictable.

THE MECHANICS

Like Keller said, if there was a clear answer to this slump, he’d already be doing it. I don’t have a clear answer. The best I can offer is looking back to another time when Keller lost velocity in-season but then found it.

In June of 2024, I had a conversation with then pitching coach Oscar Marin about Keller’s velocity finally ticking back up. The answer was two fold: he needed to get back to using those “tree trunks” for legs, and he had to create more tilt with his pelvis. If his pelvis was a little higher up during his delivery, he would create more energy with his lower half. Suddenly, the pitcher who was throwing 93-94 mph was back to over 95 mph, and he went on one of the best two month runs of his career.

For comparison’s sake, I went back to September of last year and found a 95 mph sinker that resulted in a ground out to first. I paired that next to the video of Keller’s ball four sinker to Betts Thursday:

I’ll admit you need to really slow down to see any differences, but it does look like Keller is pushing off of the rubber more effectively in the 2025 video and landing firmer with his front leg. Mechanically, your hips should open up when you show the heel of your cleats in your push off the rubber. Here’s a freeze frame of that moment:

That’s the same camera angle and the same jersey. Look how much of the “Pirates” lettering you can read between the two pitches. In 2025, it’s just the “P.” His hips are open as he’s delivering the ball. In the 2026 video, he’s not opening up as much. These are just my observations, but given Keller’s history, that very well can be the difference between 95.2 mph and 92.3 mph.

This is the worst slump we’ve seen from Keller in over four years. He’s shown he can shrug off stretches like this and get back on track. That can offer hope, but it needs to start with the sinker again. He needs that pitch to get quick outs and give his breaking balls a tunneling partner. Without that, he’s pitching with a slower fastball and a cutter that has a poor track record against left-handers. That’s not a recipe for prolonged success.

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When on the podium Thursday, Jared Jones was asked if he is a different pitcher than the pitcher we saw in 2024. Jones smirked and responded, “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” a perfect closer for the five-and-a-half minute media session.

Jones finally made his return to the PNC Park mound Friday, his first Major League outing since Sept. 27, 2024. He flashed some heat and came out aggressive, with 10 of his first 12 pitches registering at 100 mph or higher.

But we all knew Jones could do that. Back in 2024, before the Pirates had this all homegrown rotation, Jones and Paul Skenes were the Allegheny Electric Company. There’s thunder in that right arm. Sure, he set a new career velo when he hit 101.5 mph against Josh Bell, but triple digit heat is hardly new for him.

What is new, at least from what we’ve seen in his Major League career, were the secondary offerings. Jones’ first start back was a mixed bag, allowing five earned runs (including two homers) on seven hits and two walks over 4 ⅓ innings, striking out six. The best stuff from his outing was not the heat or the slider. It was the offspeed stuff.

The way Jones used those secondary pitches and how aggressive he was with them might indicate that he isn’t the same pitcher he was in 2024. He could be more complete now.

Jones had a four-pitch mix in 2024, but he relied primarily on his four-seam fastball (49.2% usage) and his slider (34.9%). He would mix in changeups and curveballs to keep hitters honest, but he was going to attack with those two offerings. In his 22 outings in 2024, fastballs and sliders accounted for at least 80% of his pitches 18 times. For all intents and purposes, he was basically a two pitch starter, a rare breed. Some would say those types of starters have a weakness by not having a third pitch. Others would argue that it should show how good those two pitches are.

Of his 77 pitches Friday, Jones threw 15 changeups and 15 curveballs, according to Baseball Savant. He never threw his secondary offerings that much in a start in his rookie campaign. Of his 21 batters faced, 10 saw a curveball or changeup for their first pitch (six resulted in a strike). Of the 22 two-strike pitches he threw, 11 were his secondary offerings. He was using it in different situations, mixing it in fully.

Well, that is after he tried to power through the Twins’ lineup early. As the game progressed, he and Endy Rodríguez pivoted to more curveballs and changeups, to better results.

“We kind of felt that they were sitting heater the entire game and we kind of just made that adjustment a little bit too late,” Jones said after the game. “No one to blame but myself, really. But yeah, once I started mixing everything in, it kind of just felt like everything was flowing pretty smooth.”

After his start in Altoona earlier this month, Jones said that he felt his changeup and curveball “have never been this good.” Don Kelly said after the game that Jones’ changeup looked better than it did in 2024. Going based off of my eye test, I can’t recall a time he looked more comfortable throwing those pitches.

“I’ve been on the shelf for 12 months now and during that time, you kind of just throw baseballs all the time uncompetitively, so you just try to work on things,” Jones said. “It’s kind of how I approached the comeback and all that stuff. I’m happy with where everything’s at right now.”

Both pitches are behaving differently than what we’ve seen in the past. The curveball had extra velocity (85.6 mph compared to 81.5 mph in 2024) and spin (up 191 RPM to 2,877 Friday). He killed spin and movement on the changeup, going from an average of six inches of induced vertical break in 2024 to four inches Friday (in this case, the closer to zero, the better because it’s giving the illusion of drop to the hitter). He threw three changeups to right-handers, something he only did once in a game as a rookie.

The results weren’t perfect. Jones left a couple curveballs up and to his hand side in the second inning which led to singles. Brooks Lee finally got a hold of a changeup for a single in the fifth. The locations of some of his pitches could have been crisper, but it was a first start back. Between the emotions of the day and kicking off some rust, that’s understandable.

Jones’ first start back didn’t feel like a 2024 Jones start. When he got into a rough spot as a rookie, he would usually try to punch his way out with one pitch, often the fastball. It didn’t always work. I saw a different intent on Friday. Had it been two years ago, he probably would have tried to pull a Houdini with the slider. This time, when the fastball wasn’t getting the results he wanted, he attacked with two different pitches.

The fastball and slider are always going to be his bread and butter, but that doesn’t exactly make the best sandwich. Perhaps Friday’s pitch mix was just an in-game response to what the other team was doing. I don’t think he’s going to finish the year throwing these secondary pitches 20% of the time.

But the fact that he can do it should be enough to show the league that this isn’t the same Jared Jones. I guess they’ll have to find out.

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It’s been a rough go for Bubba Chandler. Billed as the Pirates’ top pitching prospect last year and a potential Rookie of the Year contender coming into 2026, Chandler has yet to find his groove in Pittsburgh and has been the rotation’s weak link.

Nine starts in, Chandler is 1-5 with a 5.14 ERA. His 31 walks are the most of any National League pitcher. He has pitched only 42 innings, meaning he is averaging less than five frames an outing. He’s had some rough luck in the early going – including multiple routine fly balls falling between outfielders Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds for hits – but most of his troubles have been self-inflicted.

It’s way too soon to say the sky is falling. Chandler is hardly the first rookie pitcher with big stuff to struggle with command in the majors. You give pitchers like this ample opportunities because you never want to see a Tyler Glasnow pan out somewhere else.

At the same time, Chandler has had some ugly starts. Saturday was perhaps the ugliest, allowing five runs (four earned) with four walks over three innings. Bryce Harper launched a massive three-run homer before Chandler recorded the game’s first out. He didn’t get a whiff with his four-seam fastball.

After the game, Chandler said he was “not executing anything. That’s it.”

“Just being soft. That’s about it,” Chandler said. “I’m not searching for anything. I’ve had success here. Just not doing what I do.”

We’ve seen Chandler try to make some adjustments already to his pitch arsenal. He unveiled a sweeper earlier this season, a pitch that can tunnel off of his fastball and offer some east-to-west movement. I wrote about it here:

Chandler threw a dozen sinkers in his start on Saturday. The Pirates were looking for him to throw some fastballs down in the zone, and this would appear to be a possible solution.

Chandler didn’t appear to need new pitches. The fastball-slider-changeup combo made him a top prospect, but he’s always working on something. When faced with adversity, it would make sense that he would turn to something new to supplement his pitch mix. On paper, both pitches would seem to complement his older pitches. Given, of course, he could execute them.

Those pitches haven’t helped Chandler too much, mostly because he’s hanging them too often. Both pitches are going to play better down in the zone, but so far, they’ve been left up more often than not.

Here is where his sweepers have landed:

And the same with the sinkers:

A couple new secondary pitches could help Chandler, but not if he can’t hit his spots. To find a possible answer for that, let’s dive into his mechanics.

Chandler’s four-seam fastball is his bread and butter. He’s thrown it 54.1% of the time this season. When he feels his back against the wall, he’ll usually try to punch his way out with fastballs. His stuff plays off of the fastball.

He’s been throwing that fastball from a different arm slot this season. Using Baseball Savant’s data, here is the average arm angle his four-seam fastballs were released in every start he made in Triple-A and MLB (with his first MLB outing being Aug. 22, 2025):

Just to give a quick crash course on arm angles, it’s pretty common for a pitcher to start the season at a higher arm slot and then drop it as the year progresses. That could be either finding a more comfortable, repeatable slot or they get tired as the season gets longer. It’s probably why Chandler had a significant arm angle jump from the end of the 2024 campaign to the start of his 2025 season. By May of that year, he settled into an arm slot that was fairly consistent, usually in the 43-45 degree range. There were a few outliers, but the ball came out at roughly the same spot.

That has not been the case this season. I only have Triple-A and Major League data to pull from, but Chandler started the year at a higher arm angle that we had barely seen from him before, and then it rose even higher. On April 29, his fastball was released from a 53.4 degree arm angle. On May 10, it was 54.3 degrees. That’s a solid 10 degrees higher than where we saw him settle into last year. A few degree difference is usually just normal variance. A 10 degree change is a different arm slot.

There’s also been quite the variance in the arm slot the last couple of outings. Five degree jumps from start to start indicates that he’s not sound mechanically right now. Pitchers who work north to south, like Chandler, are less likely to cheat and drop their arm slot to get a pitch over. That’s not the case now.

So why has the arm angle changed? Chatting with an analyst and scout, their theory is Chandler is getting into his back leg more. He’s getting deeper than he was before, and his mechanics are thrown off, resulting in that higher release point. (Here are some videos to compare from 2025 to his last start against the Phillies.)

All of this is to say what I feel a lot of people would have assumed anyway: it sure looks like Chandler is overthrowing.

If that’s the correct diagnosis, he needs to find a way to get back in sync mechanically. Before his start Saturday, Don Kelly praised Chandler’s continued growth and maturity for his work between starts. That’s essential, and Chandler’s breakout in 2023 came when he started taking that work more seriously. There’s an opportunity for him to get better before his next start.

I think it’s too soon to panic about Chandler. There’s been some growth even through this rough start. I think a sinker could be a healthy addition to his mix (in moderation) and the sweeper opens up new possibilities. He needs to be able to put himself in a position to execute, though. That means finding a consistent arm slot, making sure he’s pushing off the rubber the right way and whatever else might be ailing him.

He’s too important of a pitcher to give up on, but this is an important season. The Pirates need to get more out of him. That starts with him finding the right spots and his command again.

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Jared Jones’ third rehab assignment Tuesday went about as smoothly as one could have realistically hoped. He came out of it healthy, his stuff looked good, he attacked the strike zone and spun four scoreless innings.

It was after the game that there was some turbulence.

Talking with local Altoona media after his outing, Jones was asked “is there any chance at the bullpen when you get back to Pittsburgh?” Jones seemed to initially interpret the question as will he throw a bullpen in Pittsburgh, a normal step in an arm care routine between starts. When the reporter clarified, “would you work out of the bullpen,” Jones responded “no,” took a beat and followed with a visibly annoyed, “next question.”

Jones’ starter status has been very much in question these past few months. He was one of the Pirates’ most electric arms in 2024, serving as half of the Allegheny Electric Company with Paul Skenes. Armed with a high-90s fastball and a biting slider, he may have been the Robin to Skenes’ Batman, but he looked to be a face of one of the best rotations in recent franchise history.

Then Jones strained his UCL in Spring Training of last year. It initially looked like he would avoid going under the knife, but he had a setback after restarting his throwing program and ultimately had internal brace surgery. The procedure all but guaranteed he would miss at least the first leg of the 2026 season, and he opened the campaign on the 60-day injured list.

This story is fairly common around the game. Just about every team will have a young, exciting pitcher suffer an arm injury, and the idea of converting him into a reliever will at least be broached by the media and fans. That talk is usually shut down pretty quickly, or that pitcher actually does spend some time in the bullpen.

With neither side willing to say anything of substance on Jones’ short-term future, there’s no other way to interpret this but as a standoff of a pitcher who doesn’t want to go into the bullpen and a team that is at the very least considering it. It gives an impression of a disconnect between the club and one of their top young pitchers. When you have a drastically improved clubhouse culture that has helped spur the team’s best start in years, the last thing you want is a fly in the soup.

And when I say neither side has been willing to say anything, the Pirates have had ample opportunities to put this to bed before it became an issue.

On Wednesday, manager Don Kelly was asked about Jones deflecting any talk of him going into the bullpen.

“Long-term we see Jared Jones as a starter, and as we continue to work through this, we’re gonna put Jared and all of our pitchers in the best spot possible,” Kelly responded. “We’ll be working through that with him and I think that he’s in a really good spot.”

Before Thursday’s game against the Rockies, general manager Ben Cherington was asked about Jones’ status and role once he returns.

“We’re going to continue to take it an outing at a time with him,” Cherington said. “When he’s back, we believe he’s just going to make our group of 13 stronger. Exactly what that means in terms of roles, we’re not there yet. We’re going to keep taking it a day at a time. But one way or another we believe he makes the group stronger and we’ll see where we are when we get to that point.”

When asked about Jones not answering the bullpen question, Cherington reiterated what either he or his manager had said.

“We certainly believe he’s a starting pitcher,” Cherington said. “Long term that is certainly how we see him. My view of the comments and talking to Jared is that he wanted to talk about the outing and not what was going to happen three weeks from now. We certainly believe he’s a starting pitcher. We’ll make the determinations about exactly who is in what role when he’s ready to come back on the team. Certainly very possible he’s starting games but we want to take it an outing at a time with all these guys.”

That last sentence is probably the biggest takeaway from all of this. Will Jones start? It sure sounds like that’s a real possibility. It sure sounds like he’ll start in 2027 and beyond. It sure sounds like they don’t want to count their chickens before they hatch.

Ok, but read the room. Everyone wants to know about Jones’ short-term status, especially when the bullpen desperately needs some quality right-handed arms.

Could Jones excel out of the bullpen? Absolutely. Mitch Keller once described Jones’ fastball to me as a “fuck you” pitch. It is a spot on description. He would be an absolute demon as a closer, if he went down that road.

Is Jones going to fix the bullpen in 2026? Absolutely not. Look at how the Pirates deployed Braxton Ashcraft last year. He had to learn the bullpen on the fly, but the Pirates didn’t ask him to pitch back-to-back days. He basically kept his normal schedule, appearing in a game every three to four days, like he made a start and then had his bullpen throw day. It was a smart way to give him Major League innings, not overtax him and keep him stretched out enough if there was an opportunity to start.

I have to assume Jones would be deployed the same way as a reliever. So you could either have a starter pitch out of a role he hasn’t done when he is coming off of elbow surgery, knowing full well he’s not going to be available more days than he is, or he could be a starter. This decision seems like a no-brainer. If he’s a starter long-term, why go through this short-term odyssey?

At the same time, Jones needs to read the room too.

This was a very different Pirate rotation when Jones broke through into the Majors in 2024. Skenes was just a prospect then who was set to start the season in the minors. Keller was the only bona fide starter. The rest of the rotation consisted of mercenary lefties Marco Gonzales and Martín Pérez, both on one-year contracts, and Bailey Falter, who was a castoff from the Phillies. Jones was plenty good enough to be a part of that rotation, but he also served as a symbol that this team was serious about trying to compete now. They weren’t going to stash him in Triple-A to try to weasel an extra year of team control. If he is one of their five best starters, he is going to start.

Looking at the 2026 rotation, Jones is probably one of the top five starters again. He is also no better than their No. 4 right now. Skenes is on a Cy Young pace again. Keller has twirled six quality starts in nine outings. Ashcraft is blossoming into a real stud.

Meanwhile, Bubba Chandler is going through growing pains and control issues in his rookie season. He’s hardly the first pitcher with big stuff to experience that, and he’s still performing well enough to warrant trying to sort things out in the majors.

That leaves Carmen Mlodzinski. The issues that plagued his stint as a starter last season – namely struggles against left-handed hitters and going through the lineup a third time – are still there, albeit not as profound. He’s gotten to a point where he’s proven he could probably be a starter, but would probably do his best work out of the bullpen.

This rotation has the potential to be one of the best in the game. The two pitchers the Pirates have at the backend of their starting five are still a better duo than most other teams’ No. 4 and 5. It makes sense why the team wouldn’t be eager to effectively tell them one is losing their job, even if there is some writing on the wall.

For Jones, there are ways to deflect the bullpen question. A generic “my goal is to come back as a starter” or “I just want to help the team win” would have gone a long way here. Everyone knows he wants to be a starter. He can be a great starter. So much of his career has been based on proving people wrong. What’s another log on this fire?

Maybe this is all effectively nothing. That there’s enough of an understanding behind the scenes that Jones and the club are on the same wavelength. It doesn’t have that impression right now. For the life of me, I can’t see the advantage in giving the illusion that you aren’t in sync with a player as important as Jared Jones.

Jones will make his next rehab start Sunday. He will be eligible to come off the injured list on May 25. We are going to get an answer to this saga soon, regardless of if someone says anything before Jones returns to the active roster.

So why all the secrecy?

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Don Kelly is a baseball survivor. He didn’t debut in the Majors until he was 27 and didn’t get his first real shot until he was 30. He jokes about how many times he was designated for assignment in his career (nine). If you look at his Baseball Reference page, you’ll find a replacement level player who spent parts of nine seasons in the big leagues. That webpage tells a story of persistence as much as it tells one of hits, RBI and games played.

One year ago today, the Pirates named Kelly their manager after dismissing Derek Shelton. In that time, Kelly has accumulated an 80-82 record, including a 21-17 mark this season. There’s a level of hope around this team that hasn’t always been there the last few years. There certainly wasn’t much there whenever Kelly assumed the managerial job.

Right now, Kelly is aspiring to build something in Pittsburgh. The stated goal for this club is to make the postseason (period, full stop). The theme of earning respect has been preached since he took over last year. His speech about building a team which reflects the blue-collar Pittsburgh work ethic has been used in team advertisements. It’s not just a commercial, but something that has resonated with his players.

It’s nearly impossible to accomplish everything he has set out to do after just one calendar year on the job. Really, the most impressive thing that Kelly has done as a manager so far is what he did as a player: survive.

I can’t stress how dire things were 365 days ago. That final series of the Shelton era in St. Louis was as dead as I had ever seen that clubhouse. Few wanted to talk pregame. Nobody wanted to talk postgame. They were swept. Actually, they were swept before the series even began. There was a level of apathy that had spread through the clubhouse, waiting for the off-day so the inevitable firing of their manager could just finally happen. The dismissal was hardly a surprise – how could it be whenever the team is 12-26 after coming into the year as a playoff sleeper – but it didn’t mean the problems plaguing the team were suddenly fixed. It just meant the burden was passed onto someone new.

I heard speculation from league sources at the time the team needed a kick in the butt, and Kelly wasn’t the type of guy to do that. I had one source outside of the organization opine to me they hoped Kelly would still have a chance at being a manager somewhere else if he was let go after the 2025 campaign. Kelly’s job was only secured through the end of the season. Given how poorly things were going for the Pirates, few should have felt secure about their 2026 status. At this point a year ago, a leadership shakeup seemed like a distinct possibility, if not the probability if they were going to continue at a 100-loss pace.

Kelly’s first job was to apply a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. He challenged certain players to take a bigger leadership role. He got tossed by umpires when he felt his team wasn’t being afforded the same respect as the other club. He showed everyone in that room and everyone watching that he cared about his team. The 2025 Pirates were able to cross the finish line with enough wins and optimism for the future that Kelly and general manager Ben Cherington were retained.

In the offseason, he listened to his pitchers’ input and made a surprising change at pitching coach to swap out Oscar Marin with Bill Murphy. The pitchers thought they could get better, and Kelly wanted to nurture that belief. His phone call with Ryan O’Hearn was the final selling point the All-Star needed to sign a multi-year free agent contract. The pieces of the team Kelly wanted to manage and the culture he wanted to establish were starting to shine.

Ultimately, Shelton’s failure to establish a culture in Pittsburgh is what doomed him here. I don’t put all the blame on him – it’s hard to build something meaningful when the first couple years are clubhouses filled with waiver wire pickups, fringe Major League ready prospects getting called up and veterans on mercenary one-year deals – but no identity was built, and that is arguably the most paramount job of a manager in today’s game. Analysts and assistant coaches can suggest which matchups to avoid or when to make pitching changes. Heck, if you or I were forced to manage on a Paul Skenes start day, we could come up with a lineup card and decide when to go to the bullpen. If we had to manage one game, we would stand a chance to win it.

It’s the day-to-day grind that defines culture and ultimately a manager’s worth. Want to know why Milwaukee has been able to survive their general manager and field manager leaving in recent years and continue winning division titles? It’s the culture. I saw it first hand last postseason. Players pour into one another and are willing to work smarter and harder to find ways to get better. Everyone in baseball will say their goal is to win every day. In a Pat Murphy clubhouse, that is implied, whether it’s ownership or a journeyman utilityman.

I see hints of that type of culture being built now in Pittsburgh. Kelly wants the city’s identity to be reflected in the way the team plays. There certainly weren’t extravagant birthday cakes and bouncy houses in previous clubhouses. Newcomers like O’Hearn, Brandon Lowe and Gregory Soto have become leaders for the position and Latin players. They have ignored what has transpired over the last decade of Pirates baseball since their last playoff berth.

“I don’t give a shit what happened the last 10 years,” O’Hearn told me on Opening Day. “I wasn’t a part of it. I’m a part of this team in 2026. I’m ready to win.”

Time will tell if this is actually the start of something sustainable and if we will have reason to remember the 2026 Pirates. They wouldn’t be in this position without Kelly.

He – and plenty of others around the team – survived 2025. Now Kelly and his club have the opportunity to try to live and do something grander in year two.

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Yohan Ramírez has worn many hats in his seven-year Major League career. The journeyman right-hander suited up for eight teams from 2022-2024 alone, which included being picked up off waivers from the Pirates, and eventually being let go via waivers.

Normally, when a pitcher bounces through a quarter of the league, it shows there are some underlying traits that a team is willing to gamble on but ultimately can’t develop, sending him back to the waiver wire. Those players usually, eventually, don’t pan out.

That’s what makes Ramírez’s production such a pleasant surprise for the Pirates so far this season. Entering Tuesday, he’s totalled 21 ⅔ innings over 15 outings, resulting in a 2.08 ERA, 24 strikeouts compared to 10 walks and a 1.15 WHIP. He’s grading well above league average in whiff rate (28%), strikeout rate (27.3%) and average exit velocity (85.2 mph), and his 0.90 win probability added is the second-highest of any Pirate pitcher, trailing only Gregory Soto.

Waiver wire and Minor League free agent lottery tickets can hit, but it’s rare for it to work out on a second or third attempt with the same team. Ramírez was claimed off waivers in 2022 before being designated for assignment in 2023. He returned as a Minor League free agent in 2025 before pitching to a 5.40 ERA in 24 Major League appearances in the second half of last year.

It begs the question, what is it about Ramírez that was worth taking additional shots, even if the first couple didn’t work too well?

“Yohan has nasty stuff,” Don Kelly said. “Utilizing that in the zone has been huge for him to throw strikes, get ahead, use it to both hands. Really nasty against righties, and he’s been better against left-handed hitters, and I think it’s because of the breaking ball and the way he’s been able to manipulate it a little bit, to use it to left-handers.”

There’s no question Ramírez has stuff. If you were to watch a bullpen or see him on the backfields of Pirate City, you would think he was a closer. If you’d prefer an analytic over the eye test, going off of Stuff+ (which only looks at the physical characteristics of a pitch, like velocity and movement), he is the Pirates’ second-nastiest pitcher, recording a 111 Stuff+ (Mason Montgomery has a 112).

Trusting the stuff was part of the equation of why the Pirates signed Ramírez to a guaranteed contract in November, but Kelly’s answer was two-fold.

“There’s no one who sees Yohan who doesn’t get a smile on his face,” Kelly said. “What a guy to have in the clubhouse and keep the energy up and pump his teammates up.”

Ramírez is, by this reporter’s account, perhaps the happiest person who has passed through the Pirates’ clubhouse over the last seven years. Seldom seen without a smile, it’s safe to assume Ramírez’s personality and good clubhouse vibe have helped him get an extra opportunity or two.

If nothing else, it helped him keep his head up through his globetrotting seasons.

“It’s my personality,” Ramírez said, via interpreter and coach Stephen Morales. “I’m trying to keep myself in the same spot every day. Just control what I can control and keep that harmony around me.”

That harmonious attitude and raw stuff bought Ramírez extra opportunities. This year, a little more harmony in his delivery and utilizing his stuff differently is turning him into one of the bullpen’s most valuable pitchers.

Looking at Ramírez’s mechanics, the most drastic change is his arm slot. After pitching from a 30-degree arm angle in 2025, he lowered it to 24 degrees in 2026. That’s more in line with his career averages, but it is more repeatable now that he has a better rhythm and tempo.

In 2023 – during Ramírez’s first stint as a Pirate and MLB’s first year with a pitch clock – Ramírez’s tempo was either “fast” (less than 15 seconds between pitches) or “slow” (more than 30 seconds between pitches) 28.2% of the time. This season, it’s just 3.4% of his pitches, and those have all been “slow.” He’s not letting the game speed up and is staying within his mechanics, something he didn’t do often enough in 2023.

“Being consistent with that has gotten me to a really consistent arm slot,” Ramírez said.

Ramírez has also been attacking hitters with a different pitch mix. Right-handed hitters are seeing a very heavy dose of sweepers, seeing an almost 50-50 split between that breaking ball and his two fastballs.

He is also leaning more on the sinker to right-handers. Given that the spin direction of those two pitches mirror each other, it creates tunnelling opportunities, and the two pitches are working better together. A year ago, Ramírez threw his four-seamer more than any other pitch to right-handers, and batters hit .313 with a .500 slugging percentage against his fastballs. This year, it’s a .217 average and .261 slugging percentage versus his fastballs.

Ramírez’s sweeper has always had some Bugs Bunny action. Going by Run Value by 100 pitches thrown (RV/100), it’s the fifth-most valuable sweeper in baseball, averaging 3 runs above average every 100 times he throws it. Batters have a .074 batting average and .111 slugging percentage against it this year. It’s his best pitch, and not only is he throwing it the most out of his entire arsenal (39%), he can use it to make his sinker better.

Ramírez is also attacking left-handers differently, using the four-seamer as his primary fastball while throwing an equal amount of sweepers and curveballs for his breaking pitch:

The four-seamer and curveball also creates a vicious tunnel. Take a look at this at-bat against Victor Scott II on April 30. Ramírez doesn’t execute a four-seamer perfectly and it sails high and away for a ball. He then follows it up with a curveball which drops in for a called strike. A mistake pitch transitions into a pitch that has a very similar flight path to the hitter’s decision point before taking a dive down, and it gets him ahead in the count:

“I try to mix every pitch, whether they’re righties or lefties,” Ramírez said. “I can use either sliders or curveballs. It doesn’t matter the side of the batter.”

When sequenced properly, and with a consistent arm slot, Ramírez can use both of his breaking balls and both fastballs to retire both right-handers and left-handers. He’s achieving that right now. Time will tell how sustainable his performance is, but this is a team that needs middle relief and he has emerged as one of their best options so far.

It may have taken three or four tries, but this version of Yohan Ramírez seems like the type of guy those eight teams who took a flyer on him hoped he would be.

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It has been four weeks since the Pirates promoted top prospect Konnor Griffin to the Majors. Or, if you prefer to look at it in a way that will show up on the back of a baseball card, 100 Major League plate appearances.

In the grand scheme of things, 100 plate appearances is barely a blip on the radar, but it is one of the first mile markers of a career. It’s a small enough sample size that you probably shouldn’t get too high or too low on the results, regardless of if their OPS is in the .400s or .900s, but it’s a large enough sample size that we can start to observe some tendencies. The league is adjusting to a young player. How is that young player adjusting to the league?

“It’s been good,” Griffin was telling me. “Getting thrown in there every day, just trying to figure things out day by day. It’s been fun. It’s been challenging. I feel like I’m getting better.”

Griffin is a fascinating player not just because he’s the top prospect in the game, but because we so rarely see players who ascend to the majors this quickly. He was in high school just two years ago. Now he’s the Pirates’ everyday shortstop. Under normal circumstances, he would still be in the minors developing. The Pirates are trying to win now and view him as their best option at shortstop, so they’re having him learn and develop on the fly at the game’s highest level.

It’s why you have to almost grade Griffin’s rookie season on a curve. That curve might have to be more lenient when looking at his first 100 plate appearances. While the overall results may not be the most flattering, there are some good things at play, and that growth mindset that helped make him the top prospect in the game is still shining through.

THE DATA

In Griffin’s first 100 Major League at-bats, he has slashed .231/.290/.341 with two home runs, two doubles, six walks, 13 RBI and seven stolen bases. All told, it is a .631 OPS, or a 75 OPS+ if you prefer to see offensive production scaled to the rest of the league. It’s a below average slash line, but for someone who just turned 20 years old and is getting his first taste of the majors, it’s hardly a surprise.

The journey to that season OPS comes with some peaks and valleys. Griffin has played 26 Major League games at the time of publication, and in his previous 15, he has a .706 OPS. That’s buoyed by his first two home runs, but that’s a roughly league-average OPS over a span of more than half of his career:

That may be an encouraging sign, but it’s a messy .700 OPS. His whiff rate has gone up, albeit not drastically, the past few weeks. His whiffing a bit more in the zone, so while he is chasing a bit less, the strikeout rate has increased:

The old school approach when a player whiffs too much is to shorten the swing. Griffin has been doing that.

On April 16, Griffin’s swing was averaging 7.7 feet with a 49.4% fast swing rate (a swing registering at 75 mph or higher), according to Baseball Savant. Since April 17, or the last two weeks, that swing has been 7.5 feet with a 56.5% fast swing rate. It’s not a drastic change. There’s no need for a drastic change right now.

But for someone who can generate bat speed and pop pretty organically, he doesn’t need the longest swing. A more compact stroke can generate pop too.

“I’m trying not to have too big of a move because I’m a longer guy,” Griffin said. “I don’t have to gear up to try to hit balls hard. I’m just trying to focus on touching it and good things will happen.”

THE MECHANICS

During my conversation with Griffin, I pulled out my cell phone and showed him a gif I made comparing two of his swings. The first was against David Morgan of the Padres on April 6, the other against Jacob Misiorowski of the Brewers on April 25. Both pitchers offered Griffin a center-cut fastball, so while Misiorowski’s pitch came in 4.1 mph quicker (95.6 mph vs. 99.7 mph), it’s a similar offering that should yield a similar swing. Griffin fouled off the pitch against Morgan, while he flared a single to right off of Misiorowski.

Before I could ask Griffin about the changes I saw, he pointed to the swing on the right, the one that yielded a hit.

“Just trying to shorten up a little bit,” Griffin said. “Maybe not as big of a leg kick, hand movement. Just trying to be short and quick to the ball. Making sure I’m staying on fastball timing.”

The front leg was the most obvious change. Cutting down on the leg kick helped him get his front foot down against Misiorowski. Griffin assessed that he was caught a little in between on the swing against Morgan, which is why he wasn’t able to put a great swing on the pitch. Against Misiorowski, he had a firmer foundation and got more of the barrel to the ball, resulting in a bloop hit.

Getting the barrel to the ball is paramount for any hitter. It’s why Griffin has quieted his hands too. He had some bat movement earlier in April, but as the month progressed, he had the bat at a more set position with his hands closer to his load.

He’s already made his swing a little more compact. Quieter hands are helping him simplify his swing further.

“Sometimes when I was moving my hands, I would be in different spots and be inconsistent a little bit,” Griffin said. “There’s not much negative movement happening. I already have the barrel in a position ready to hit.”

THE OUTLOOK

Griffin has taken 100 Major League plate appearances. He’s going to take thousands more. This is just a small sample of what is positioned to be a long career.

The overall results are how he will ultimately be judged, but the process is my real takeaway. Griffin loves watching film. He’s not afraid to experiment to try to get better. His rise last year was due, in large part, to the work he did in the 2024 offseason to improve his swing. The drive to be great is there.

He’s still young and growing. The first 100 at-bats are going to look different than the next 100, which will look different than the 100 after that.

I suspect the constant through his Major League journey is going to be his approach.

“The only thing that matters is competing one pitch at a time,” Griffin said. “Trying to control what I can control. Try to keep it simple.”

It has been a month and a day since the Pirates embarked on their 2026 campaign. It’s also been a month of me adopting a new postgame coverage style: the postgame thoughts. It’s been a fun way to express my thoughts of the day, but it is mostly disposable. You could check out a note from early April if you want, but it’s really just a reaction from that day.

So let’s make it a little grander. We’re a month into the season. I have thoughts about this club. Let’s take a look:

1. Man, the vibes are just better.

Credit it to the cone, more robust veteran leadership, the fact that this core has been around each other for a couple years (either in the Majors or Minors), but this is a 180 from last year. That 2025 team just didn’t have juice like this.

There was a damn bouncy house (as well as a Sesame Street table with crayons and coloring books) in the clubhouse Monday, a reference to a joke Paul Skenes made this past road trip of ways to potentially celebrate Konnor Griffin’s 20th birthday.

“This is new to me,” Jared Triolo said with a nod towards the bouncy house. “It’s good. Everybody seems to be in good spirits. Clubhouse feels lively.”

Winning through the power of friendship memes aside, last year’s clubhouse was flat. You felt the pressure mounting early. This year’s group was looser, and it looks like some culture is being established.

2. The rotation has been as advertised. Their collective 3.47 ERA is fourth-best in baseball, and their 3.5 fWAR is third. And they are positioned to add Jared Jones back to that group as early as late May. He’ll begin a rehab assignment on Wednesday with Single-A Bradenton.

I’m still eyeballing the rotation as a potential place to add to this club come the deadline, assuming of course the Pirates are buyers. If they convert Carmen Mlodzinski back in a reliever, their realistic starter depth options are Hunter Barco, Jose Urquidy, Wilber Dotel and Antwone Kelly. I fully expected the Pirates to sign someone this winter just to add another veteran inning eater. That never really happened (unless you want to count Urquidy, which seems like a stretch).

Braxton Ashcraft, Bubba Chandler and Mlodzinski are on pace to throw more innings than they ever have as a pro. Jones is coming off of elbow surgery. The upside of this rotation is still tremendous. The floor is scary if those guys can’t pitch through September.

3. The second position that I would look to upgrade at the deadline, assuming the Pirates are buyers? Catcher. I just don’t know if there is an option out there. The rental market seems thin (Travis d’Arnaud, anyone?) so it would have to be a more expensive trade for a controllable player, and considering how many resources the Pirates have invested in catchers so far — whether that is draft picks or trade package headliners — that would be a tough pill to swallow.

But really, is this the best this quartet of catchers can produce? FanGraphs has them valued at -0.1 WAR so far.

Henry Davis has an elite arm, has become a reliable receiver and the pitching staff loves throwing to him. He just hasn’t hit. Regardless of if you want to take the eye test or dive into the data, I haven’t seen anything to suggest that he is on the right path.

Joey Bart is catching more bullpens and trying to be a better backstop, but his offensive profile has regressed. We all knew that his 2024 was anchored by him running into some homers, and they just haven’t been there the last two seasons.

Meanwhile, in Triple-A Indianapolis, Rafael Flores and Endy Rodríguez are batting around the Mendoza line (though Flores is at least hitting the ball hard).

I’ve seen people complain online about Bart, asking why he is here. The better question is who is a better option right now? I just don’t see one. Flores or Rodríguez could emerge, but right now, the best option is just riding with Davis’ glove as the No. 1 with Bart as the backup. That might be good enough for right now, but it’s not going to hold for years to come.

4. So is this team for real?

The starting pitching needs to show they can hold up for 162. The offense is very top-heavy and anchored by Oneil Cruz playing like a consistent impact force and Ryan O’Hearn competing for a batting title. How likely is it that those two keep that pace, not to mention Brandon Lowe being on pace for 40 home runs? The middle relief is iffy at best and needs someone besides Isaac Mattson to step up.

And yet… yeah. I think it is for real.

A lot still needs to go right. They need to stay healthy. Cruz can’t disappear. Jones will need to show that he is the same Jared Jones we saw in 2024. The outfield defense will need to improve. But this is by far the most talented Pirates team I’ve been around. I can’t think of two many times where they just out-talented an opponent like they have a couple times this year (the Nationals series comes to mind). They can be sloppy and inconsistent at times, but I think having that underlying talent is going to prevent some long losing streaks. It only takes 80-something wins to make the postseason, and yeah, I could see that.

It’s like I wrote about for the first column here. Hope is a dangerous thing. It’s also a force for keeping us going. And for the first time in a long time, I see some reasons to put hope into the local ball club.

PIRATES TRIVIA

Paul Skenes flirted with history in his start on Friday, taking a perfect game into the seventh inning. The Pirates have never thrown a perfect game in their franchise’s history. Which starter had the longest outing where they did not allow a baserunner the entire start?

A. Babe Adams

B. Paul Skenes

C. Max Kranick

D. John Candelaria

HE SAID IT

“His stuff is pretty unreal. The way he makes hitters look down there is cool to watch from third base. His arsenal of pitches is special.”

– Jared Triolo on top Pirates Minor League prospect Seth Hernandez

Triolo was on a rehab assignment with Single-A Bradenton. He will have that assignment transferred to Double-A Altoona Tuesday.

KEEPING MY EYE ON…

A quick look at three things I’m going to be watching for in this series against the Cardinals:

1. Monday starter Dustin May has leaned on cutters against left-handers this season, throwing it 21% of the time. Lowe has a career .304 batting average and .654 slugging percentage against cutters.

I like a lot of Lowe’s matchups against the Cardinals’ probable starters. Kyle Leahy’s curveball has not been an effective tool against left-handed hitters, but he’s been sticking with it. Andre Pallante has allowed a .409 batting average with his four-seamer to left-handers. Hunter Dobbins didn’t have a good showing against lefties as a rookie.

I see a lot of favorable matchups for any of the lefty swingers in the lineup, but Lowe in particular. Lowe has made good contact this season in the lanes these starters use, so I see some opportunity to do damage.

2. Ashcraft said after his start in Texas that he felt his slider was back to what it was in the past. We’ve seen the curveball sparkle so far this season, but this Cardinals team has the lowest whiff percentage on curveballs in the National League (22.8%).

One of the reasons why Ashcraft’s breaking pitches are so effective is because he can throw them in the zone. If he has the slider back to where he wants it, I’ll be interested to see if he plays with his curveball a bit. He has one pitch that can get some gyro dive in the slider, so use the curveball to get bigger breaks, potentially out of the zone. Would he be better off trying to get some chases with his curve? That’s a question not just for this start, but the rest of the season, assuming his slider stays sharp.

3. Good to see Konnor Griffin start to elevate the ball a little more. I’ve written it a hundred times already, but this is going to be a learning process. The bat speed is there and he showed in Milwaukee that he can impact the baseball. I want to see him continue to get more consistent with his swing length and attack angle, which I think (and the data suggests) he is.

CHECK OUT THE PODCASTS

Time to plug what I’ve been doing with multimedia lately. Jones is set to start a rehab assignment this week, which raises the question of how he fits into this Pirates rotation. I took a look at that and made a case for why putting Mlodzinski in the bullpen might not be a slam dunk for Monday’s OffBeat, a daily podcast I’m doing with North Shore Nine:

New episodes of The Alex Stumpf Show with Bucco Bantr and my all-MLB show with Justice delos Santos will be coming out soon as well.

TRIVIA ANSWER

C. Kranick

Kranick tossed five perfect innings against the Cardinals in his Major League debut on June 27, 2021. A rain delay at Busch Stadium ended the rookie’s afternoon early, but he still earned the win in a 7-2 Pirate victory.

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McDonald’s is, perhaps above all else, an American symbol. From small towns to big cities, you can always find a McDonald’s. When people from other countries mock Americans, our collective love of hamburgers and fries is an easy jab. When people critique our country’s hyper-capitalistic culture, that clown is going to be the face of that criticism.

Baseball is another American symbol. It’s right up there with democracy, the airplane and jazz music for our greatest contributions to the world. It is our country’s pastime, a beautiful unifier from state to state and from today to centuries past. We all have this beautiful game as a touchstone.

As I walked through Globe Life Field this week – the final city that I had yet to cover a ballgame in – I thought about McDonald’s and what ballparks and the fast food establishment have become. Sure, you can still get a Big Mac, like you could decades ago, and you can still catch nine innings in Major League Baseball’s newest venue (excluding the Athletic’s temporary home, the converted Minor League stadium Sutter Health Park).

But do you want any personality with your ballpark? How about the luxury of being able to sit in the back of your seat in the upper deck and be able to still see the whole field? Do you want the facade to have any personality? Then this isn’t the ballpark for you.

The defining characteristic of Globe Life Field is how it doesn’t seem to even care. That’s not a reflection of the employees working there, but what the Rangers’ vision was. The concourses are filled with pop up souvenir stands, akin to what you would pass walking to your airport gate. There’s the Texas Ranger statue, which was too controversial for the Dallas Airport because of the subject’s problematic history, but it’s fine to display in the ballpark. It’s the only statue inside of the stadium’s gate. Their tribute to their 2023 World Series winning team is a banner in the rafters and this small display along the outfield wall. Pittsburgh International Airport has a grander tribute to Franco Harris, George Washington and Nellie Bly.

I write this not to just rag on one Major League park, but because I fear it’s a sign of things to come across the league. The McDonald’s-ification of how this game is presented and what it cares about. There’s no mistaking that both are businesses trying to generate profit, but when you strip away McDonald’s ball pits and the colorful facades in favor of another drive-thru lane, you have fewer distractions from the fact that you’re eating a hamburger that was under a heating lamp for 45 minutes.

I pray baseball never gets to that point, though I fear its inevitability.

Baseball is facing an impending crisis this winter. The current Collective Bargaining Agreement is set to expire Dec. 1, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. ET. It is almost certain that the owners will lock out the players unless a deal is reached before then, which seems unlikely at this time. In a day where the game is actually growing, overtaking the NBA as the No. 2 sport in the country, we are facing a shutdown for a self-inflicted issue.

We are watching one of the greatest collections of elite ball players the game has ever seen. The World Baseball Classic was everything the league wanted it to be. We are coming off of one of the greatest World Series of all time. The game hasn’t had momentum like this since the Mitchell Report. And it’s all at risk of shutting down so owners could implement some sort of salary cap. Not for competitive reasons, regardless of what anyone will say, but because team valuation growth is trailing behind the other three leagues and some owners have failed to sell their clubs. As a fan of the sport, it’s disheartening to not know when Opening Day is going to be next season.

When you have a crisis in faith, some say look to God. To do so, you go to a house of worship. When I have a crisis in baseball, I go to the ballpark. When I see the stadiums that have been built lately, I just see that McDonald’s-ification.

Globe Life Field is hardly an anomaly. Truist Park is just Space Mountain in the Braves’ DisneyLand. The Battery is what really matters and what drives revenue. The Braves do have a large fanbase footprint because the south is very underrepresented. (Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi all fall under the Braves’ broadcast blackout map, with those states totaling roughly 25 million people.) The league’s second-newest stadium is a hub for out-of-state fans in a suburb rather than a ballpark in Atlanta.

loanDepot Park, the third-newest, is an echo chamber unless the roof is open. A view of Miami is teased when the roof is retracted, but most of the time you may as well be playing on the moon. The home run obelisk that has a cult following has been banished outside. The fish tank, night club and swimming pool, all the features that offered personality to the park, have since been removed. It’s just a streamlined building.

The proposed new Athletics ballpark in Las Vegas is being built to serve out-of-town fans rather than the home fans first. It’s perhaps the smart business move since Las Vegas doesn’t seem to really want a baseball team, but it’s chasing a buck over prioritizing building a fanbase. Had it not been for Hurricane Milton ripping the roof off Tropicana Field and killing a proposed stadium deal, the Rays’ proposed Gas Plant Stadium would’ve still doomed the franchise to the same terrible location for fans to travel to, but it at least would have come with a knockoff version of the Braves’ Battery, showing where the priority was.

I hate that ballparks and serving home fans is becoming less and less of a priority. Eventually, we’ll realize that $10.69 for a Big Mac combo isn’t worth it and go elsewhere. The game can’t get to the point. It will haunt us for generations if it does. If the game is not at the heart of the ballpark and everything teams do, then we have lost the plot.

Across the street from Globe Life Field is Choctaw Stadium, the former home of the Rangers. It’s now a multi-use venue for a United Football League team, Dallas’ soccer club and high school events. Gone is the grassy knoll in center that fans would run across to snag home runs, a charming reminder of our Little League days. Still standing is the beautiful facade that presents this structure as not just place where you could play baseball, but the place where baseball is played. This is the Rangers’ cathedral. This is where you come to watch our country’s great game in Arlington.

Instead, there’s a building that looks like a salt silo with a Rangers logo stapled on next door. I got to ballpark No. 30 too late.

PIRATES TRIVIA

Oneil Cruz has hit eight runs and driven in 23 RBIs in March and April, becoming the first Pirate to do so since Jeff King in 1996. Who was the last Pirate to hit that many home runs and drive in that many runs in any calendar month?

A. Andrew McCutchen

B. Josh Bell

C. Brian Giles

D. Pedro Álvarez

HE SAID IT

“I told him I was having a rough day. That was the at-bat where I needed to do something. I said to him that I was gonna hit a home run there. He pulled me to the side and hit me in the head really hard. I was on my way to hit.”

– Oneil Cruz on his interaction with Marcell Ozuna before hitting a home run off the top of the right field foul pole Wednesday, via interpreter and coach Stephen Morales

KEEPING MY EYE ON…

A quick look at three things I’m going to be watching in this series against the Brewers:

1. In his major league career, few teams have thrown more fastballs to Cruz than the Brewers. Only 46.3% of the pitches they’ve ever thrown to him have been a breaking ball or offspeed pitch. The only teams that have thrown fewer are the Angels (small sample size interleague opponent) and the Phillies (46.2%).

So far, Cruz has slugged .490 with three home runs and a 100.2 mph average exit velocity against fastballs. There is plenty of swing and miss to go with those results (31.6% whiff rate, 19 strikeouts in 58 plate appearances), but when he’s made contact, it’s been loud.

Do the Brewers stick to their guns and attack him with heaters? Brandon Woodruff is basically just fastball-changeup to lefties and we know Jacob Misiorowski isn’t afraid to throw his elite fastball. This is shaping up to be a strength vs. strength matchup.

2. Paul Skenes is throwing his changeup more and more each month of his major league career. The Brewers are last in baseball in team batting average (.133), on-base percentage (.193) and slugging percentage (.190) against offspeed pitches, not to mention a 40% whiff rate against the pitch.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see plenty of Skenes changeups Friday. They could be especially useful against Brice Turang, who is off to a terrific start this year.

3. Nick Yorke is mired in a 3-for-32 slump right now. In that time, he’s had a 50% hard hit rate and 19.3% whiff rate. Only 10 other hitters across baseball can match those results since Yorke’s slump started on April 12 (Carlos Cortes, Gavis Sheets, Turang, Brandon Marsh, Ryan O’Hearn, Josh Jung, Freddie Freeman, Andy Pages, Troy Johnson and José Ramírez). There’s a lot of good company there.

I’m still buying that making hard contact and not whiffing is Yorke’s path to success. He’s just not catching the sweet spot of the bat right now. Can he get a few to fall this series? Lefty Kyle Harrison would seem like a good candidate to help break the slump.

CHECK OUT THE PODCASTS

The National League Central seems a lot more crowded this year, with every team boasting a record above .500. I took a look at the rest of the division and power ranked them for OffBeat, my daily podcast I do with North Shore Nine.

The Alex Stumpf Show at Bucco Bantr will return next week, and my podcast where I take a look around the league with Justice delos Santos is a standalone show now. New episodes will come out soon.

TRIVIA ANSWER

B. Bell

Bell went deep 12 times with 31 RBIs en route to earning player of the month honors in May of 2019.

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Andrew McCutchen talked to traveling Pittsburgh media postgame Tuesday after the Pirates’ 5-1 loss at Globe Life Field. He talked postgame because at 5:30 p.m. Central Time that day, he jogged from the field back into the Rangers’ dugout, telling reporters that he had to get to work and couldn’t do an interview yet. The Rangers’ clubhouse opened and media availability had begun at 3 p.m. that day, so it was an anti-climactic end to two and a half hours of waiting.

Over the last three years in Pittsburgh, the local BBWAA chapter voted McCutchen as their Chuck Tanner award recipient, given to the player who was most cooperative with the media. There’s plenty of work that goes into pregame — the Rangers had a hitters meeting Tuesday, McCutchen spent some time shagging flies before taking some reps during batting practice, followed by him reconnecting with some Pirate coaches and players — but speaking as the person who covered the most Pirates games in McCutchen’s second tour with the team, I can’t remember too many instances where he didn’t make time for a group that had questions.

In this reporter’s opinion, it was clear he didn’t really want to talk to the media. Didn’t want to relive the unceremonious exit from the team he thought he was going to retire with one day. Didn’t want to talk about how instead of riding off into the sunset with the team that drafted him, developed him into an MVP and made him the face of the greatest stretch of their recent history, he’s now a part-time player with the Rangers.

When he did eventually talk, he didn’t want to say much.

That was evident in a 28-second stretch of the 5 minute and 17 second scrum where he was asked three questions by three different reporters. They were arguably the three most pertinent questions of the evening, none of which yielded an answer:

Question: “Is there disappointment involved in not being able to return to Pittsburgh?

McCutchen: “I’d rather not answer that question.”

Question: “Where do you view your relationship with the organization right now? Do you feel like you could theoretically suit up for them again one day down the road, or whenever you retire, will there be any —

McCutchen: “I don’t know. I guess you’d have to ask them.”

Question: “What was communication like with them this offseason.”

McCutchen: “I’d rather not answer that question.”

Granted, McCutchen was in a tough spot. How do you answer if you’re disappointed you’re not with the Pirates when the top shelf of your locker has blue and red Ranger hats? How can you say you want to return to an organization that made clear they didn’t really want you back this season?

How do you take the cop-out baseball answer of you’re focused on being where your feet are when you know that everyone in baseball is going to remember you for your time on the North Shore of the Allegheny river?

When McCutchen signed with the Pirates in 2023, he made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t treating this as a retirement tour. He wasn’t going to be here just to be here. He wanted to be part of a winner. Those 2023 Pirates took a big step forward, going from 100 losses to 76 wins. McCutchen played a large part in that 14-win improvement, recording a .378 on-base percentage as their primary designated hitter while also providing veteran leadership to a young clubhouse. He returned the next year and hit 20 home runs. The team stagnated with 76 wins again, but there was hope for the future and that he was going to be part of another winner in Pittsburgh.

Last year was a mess. He regressed as a hitter, needing to be pulled in the final game of the season to ensure his OPS finished at .700 rather than dip into the 600s. The hitters didn’t have one of their own step up to be a clubhouse leader. There was grumbling, and while McCutchen said he wanted to keep playing in 2026 throughout most of the campaign, it wasn’t until towards the end of the season that he made sure to add that he wanted do so in Pittsburgh.

By that point, the Pirates had already jettisoned some larger contracts at the trade deadline with the minds set that they were going to be aggressive on the free agent market that winter. They signed Ryan O’Hearn and Marcell Ozuna in addition to trading for Brandon Lowe, all of whom will be paid eight figures in 2026. The offense needed a drastic overhaul, and a 39-year-old player they viewed as a DH only who was coming off of the worst season of his career probably wasn’t an answer.

It’s worth mentioning that the Pirates’ offseason hitting additions in 2024 and 2025 were Rowdy Tellez, Michael A. Taylor, Yasmani Grandal, Tommy Pham, Adam Frazier and Spencer Horwitz. Horwitz has been a fine part of the lineup, but that group pales in comparison to what McCutchen watched the Pirates do this winter.

McCutchen was obviously hurt that he didn’t return. In a now deleted post to X, he sent a message shortly after PiratesFest expressing how he was disappointed he didn’t take part in the festivities. It was one of several posts he made this winter that he has since deleted, while still keeping a few up, like a gif hinting that he was waiting for a call from the Pirates. They didn’t offer him a contract.

By that point in the offseason, the Pirates had already acquired O’Hearn and Lowe. There wasn’t much perceived playing time available, as the February signing of Ozuna moved O’Hearn to his secondary position in right field. It had gotten to the point that if McCutchen was to theoretically make a return, he would be in Pittsburgh just to be there, going against what he had said years prior.

I don’t fault him for wanting to finish his career in Pittsburgh. The door is still theoretically, technically, potentially open. He’s one of the greatest in the franchise’s history. Having him be part of another Pittsburgh winner would have been a storybook ending to his career.

I don’t fault him if he doesn’t want to say that he would have been ok being here just to be here. Tweets can be deleted and answers can be deflected, but there’s a clear read on how he’s feeling. If he didn’t want to give that impression, well, he could have said more.

McCutchen did answer some questions Tuesday evening, none of which were as hot button as those aforementioned three. Parts of those responses included:

• What were the emotions of facing your old team? “I’ve done it before,” McCutchen said. “It’s not as emotional as it once was.” When asked a follow up if this one felt different given the context of the offseason, he responded, "I don't know. I guess. Not necessarily. Maybe in the heat or the time it was a little different, but at this point now, it's not really different. It's just another day at the ballpark. Yeah it's not much emotion compared to the first time when I was tradedWhat was it like reconnecting with some familiar faces? “It was cool. I didn’t talk to many people, but the handful of people I did talk to, it’s nice catching up.”

• What was like to reconnect with Don Kelly? “That was cool. I haven’t talked to him since last season. It’s nice to catch up and see how he’s doing.” (There are obviously many people McCutchen could have talked to this winter about his future, but evidently the manager wasn’t one. That’s at least a little context to the previous question of what communication was like this offseason.)

• What did he like about the opportunity in Texas? “I’m in the major leagues. I’m in the major leagues and I’m here and I have a role.”

• The Pirates are off to a good start, but there are some fans who are upset that you aren’t a part of it. “They [the Pirates] made a conscious effort to find ways that they can better themselves and get better, and they went out and they did that. Now it’s paying for them so far this season… They’ve done a good job thus far. And hey, good for them.”

In short, not much. At the end, he was asked again about his future with the Pirates and if he could see himself returning in some role down the road.

“We’ll see,” McCutchen responded.

Hey, at least that was an answer.

Bubba Chandler is always working on something. Between bullpens and flatground catches, there are plenty of opportunities to mess around with grips and deliveries to see if something clicks.

This past week, Chandler unveiled a new pitch that was the product of his between starts work: a sweeper.

Chandler had toyed with the pitch before when coming up through the minors, but stuck with his usual pitch mix of a four-seamer, slider, changeup and curve. He had picked it back up behind the scenes since Spring Training, but it was during his bullpen in Chicago that it really started to feel right.

So why not use it? And if you’re gonna use it, why not keep using it?

“He busted that thing off in a game, and I think we were all caught off guard a little bit,” Joey Bart, who caught that Chandler bullpen and that Sunday game in Chicago, was telling me. “It was obviously a different pitch, and it was really, really good.”

Bart was on board. He hadn’t experienced a day at Wrigley Field where the wind could carry the ball like it was all afternoon. The Cubs twice got Chandler’s four-seamer, so as the game progressed, the duo agreed on throwing more and more sweepers.

“I felt confident when I threw it,” Chandler said, “so I threw it more.”

In his two starts last week, Chandler threw more sweepers than any of his other secondary pitches (37 sweepers, 36 changeups and 25 sliders). The results have been fine so far – hitters are 2-for-8 with three strikeouts and a 27.8% whiff rate – but the main takeaway is it moves differently.

The sweeper has a very similar spin rate to his slider, and while both primarily get more vertical movement, the sweeper offers more horizontal movement (9.1 inches of glove-side break compared to 1.9 inches for the slider). Chandler has been able to use it on his glove side, getting some whiffs and called strikes in an area of the zone that his changeup doesn’t play:

“He’s got so much ride on his fastball and the way his arm works that it can be more difficult for him to get stuff that moves laterally,” Bart said. “For him to be able to do that is huge, especially to righties.”

But it’s not just a pitch that he’s trying to yank and try to get as much lateral movement as possible. He’s also shown he can throw it hand side, and given that his the sweeper’s spin mirrors his four-seamer, he creates a really nice tunnel.

The Rays’ Ben Williamson experienced that first hand in back-to-back pitches. The first was a fastball that just missed up and in, but Chandler followed with a sweeper that caught the low, inside corner:

That gif demonstrates why this could be such an important pitch for Chandler. He has struggled to stay in the zone this year, resulting in 10 walks in his first two starts. He’s walked only three total his last two times out, and the sweeper can be a big reason why. For one, he can throw it in the zone. If he can get that amount of movement and have it land in the strikezone, then he has a tool to get back into counts.

But it also changes the eyeline for hitters. Chandler’s fastball has ride. It creates the illusion of rise. It’s a weapon, but when he gets out of sync, it tends to keep flying up. If he misses, he misses. With the sweeper, he can use some of those misses to set up his new breaking pitch, like with Williamson. Not only can it be a get-right pitch, some of his fastball misses can have purpose. It’s not just a 1-0 count where he has to reset. It’s now a 1-0 count with the another threat that he could pull the string on you.

Chandler isn’t ditching his slider, so perhaps this could lead to a more balanced pitch mix instead of outings with 70% fastball usage. That heater may be his best pitch, but the sweeper could help support it by keeping hitters off of the fastball.

If nothing else, Chandler is still taking that fastball approach to his new offering.

“I’m just trying to throw it as hard as I can,” Chandler said. “Strike it, move it around when I need to.”

PIRATES TRIVIA

Konnor Griffin is a perfect 4-for-4 on stolen base attempts this season. Which Pirate rookie holds the franchise record for most stolen bases in a season?

A. Roberto Clemente

B. Omar Moreno

C. Tony Womack

D. Chris Duffy

HE SAID IT

“That’s part of my job, just to have a good mound presence, attack the strike zone and finish hitters. That’s what I did.”

– Wilber Dotel on being asked to get the final outs of his Major League debut, via interpreter and coach Stephen Morales

KEEPING MY EYE ON…

A quick look at three things I’m going to be watching in this series against the Rangers:

1. Let’s start with the obvious. We have to talk Cutch.

Andrew McCutchen got off to a hot start but has slumped of late, hitting just .207 with a .629 OPS on the season. He’s whiffing at an alarming rate (45.6%), including at 51.5% of the time against breaking pitches. Braxton Ashcraft’s breaking balls have been outstanding so far, but Carmen Mlodzinski hasn’t gotten as many whiffs as normal with his curveball and slider. Let’s see how the latter wants to pitch to a franchise icon.

2. Ryan O’Hearn is hitting .400 against fastballs this season with some pretty glowing peripherals. The Rangers… don’t throw fastballs. Only 41.5% of their pitches thrown have been a four-seamer or sinker. That’s the second-lowest rate in baseball.

Will the Rangers just throw junk at him this series? He’s hitting a combined .200 against breaking and offspeed pitches. The same goes for Marcell Ozuna, who is 1-for-19 against non-fastballs this season.

3. We haven’t seen a lot of curveballs lately from Mason Montgomery (six total in his last five outings). Given how he’s performed – nine strikeouts, one walk and no runs allowed, facing 19 batters – I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. The fastball is his best offering, and the slider has been his go-to secondary pitch for years.

Looking at the Rangers’ lineup, there are two big left-handers you have to plan for: Corey Seager and Brandon Nimmo. Nimmo is batting .304 against breaking pitches so far, while Seager is batting .038. If Montgomery wants to mix in more curveballs and get back to a three-pitch mix, Seager would be a much better candidate.

OFF TO TEXAS

I’ll be at Globe Life Field to cover this series. This will be ballpark No. 30 for me. Excited to cross this off the bucket list.

I’ll have Cutch coverage on Tuesday here, as well as postgame thoughts and some OffBeat podcasts later. Speaking of OffBeat…

CHECK OUT THE PODCASTS

OffBeat is a daily podcast I’m doing with North Shore Nine, with episodes releasing Monday-Friday. Today’s episode is on Wilber Dotel and how the right-hander has emerged as one of the top pitching prospects in the system.

I also have a weekly show with Justice delos Santos where we look at the game as a whole. This week we took a look at Mike Trout’s resurgence, Mason Miller’s dominance and some of the greatest “out of nowhere” performances in recent history.

And how about one more. Bucco Bantr and I are recording a weekend show right on the field at PNC Park this year. Here’s the most recent episode:

TRIVIA ANSWER

C. Womack

Womack swiped a league-leading 60 bags in 1997, breaking Moreno’s record of 53, set in 1977.

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On Wednesday, Mason Montgomery made his first Major League start, tossing a 1-2-3 top of the first before handing the ball off to Carmen Mlodzinski. The strategy worked like a charm. Mlodzinski tossed six scoreless innings, and the Pirates won, 2-0.

It was the first time Don Kelly had a traditional opener game, excluding bullpen games. It worked, but there’s one thing about openers: once you use one, you’re announcing to the league that it’s officially on the table. You may not get a traditional starting pitcher to prepare for that night. Lineups and strategies need to be adjusted. It often creates an advantage for the pitcher’s, so it has to be considered. And I’m not talking about just Mlodzinski, either.

Of course Paul Skenes and Mitch Keller don’t need an opener, but there are other pitchers on this staff that could benefit from having a reliever go first. Let’s take a look.

Candidate 1: Carmen Mlodzinski

Mlodzinski has done well this season, even if he needed to dance through the raindrops a couple times later in games already. That’s been one of the main criticisms surrounding him as a starter so far: he struggles the second and third time through the order. Left-handers have also been a problem, which he reflected on when looking back at his outing Wednesday.

“I’m going to do whatever they ask me to at the end of the day,” Mlodzinski said. “I think it’s a reality check for me. Also I need to be better against left handed batters. I want to progress as a pitcher and be able to handle both sides of the plate equally. Especially as a starting pitcher, it’s super important. I don’t want to just be a matchup based pitcher. Little bit of a reality check to be able to push forward and say I need to be better getting left-handed hitters out.”

We’ve seen Mlodzinski get an opener once already. If another team has dangerous left-handers at the top of their order, he might get another. If that happens, who should get the ball first?

The perfect opener: Evan Sisk

Starting a lefty will force the opposing manager to either break up their left-handed hitters or give the opener a cakewalk of left-on-left matchups. It’s why Montgomery worked so well on Wednesday, but let’s take it one step further and look at what makes Sisk unique: his arm slot. He’s a sidearmer, so his stuff is going to have a west-to-east movement profile. Mlodzinski works north-to-south against left-handers, so it’s going to be a very different look.

Montgomery was a starter in the minors not too long ago, so that experience could be useful. I’d argue he’d be a better option for a leverage left-on-left matchup late than Sisk is, so let’s keep him in the ‘pen.

Candidate 2: Hunter Barco

The case for an opener: Barco was optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis last week to finally stretch out as a starting pitcher. The Pirates don’t have a ton of starter depth at the moment, so if they needed someone in the next month or so, Barco with an opener might be the best option.

Barco’s turn as a reliever was, well, mixed, but he has some experience out of the bullpen now. Given that his career high in innings is 102 ⅓ (set last season), having an opener to manage the workload and give him four or five inning starts would help keep his innings under control while also building him up for future seasons. His hand splits weren’t too extreme in the minors last season, but Major League right-handers did bat .308 with a .692 slugging percentage in his brief time in the majors this year. Finding a way to minimize those at-bats probably wouldn’t hurt.

The perfect opener: Yohan Ramírez

Like giving Mlodzinski a lefty opener, starting a right-hander will either give Barco a patch of lefties later or give Ramírez easier matchups against right-handers at the top of the order.

Barco works more north-to-south, so some Ramírez sweepers should give hitters a look at more horizontal pitches early. If Barco is going to rely on drop, then don’t let hitters see a ton of drop from the opener. Ramírez can also pitch two innings, giving Kelly more flexibility for how to get Barco into the game.

Candidate 3: Jared Jones

The case for an opener: Look, Jones doesn’t need an opener. He showed he can handle being a starter just fine in 2024. But he is coming back from elbow surgery, and he might not just be thrown back into the fire like he was two years ago. He is going to be monitored.

“We know, and he knows, we are going to have to budget some innings this year,” general manager Ben Cherington said on April 7. “It’s not going to be 180 innings, it’s going to be less than that. We have to manage that volume for 2026. We haven’t gotten that far into how we are exactly going to do that. He’s going to be on a very structured, scheduled program.

“He’s someone who is really important to us as a starter long term. He’s going to know when he’s pitching. We will figure out exactly how to make that work when we get closer to the big leagues.”

Having an opener or piggyback starters is one way to accomplish this. Jones threw a bullpen at PNC Park Tuesday. He should be entering the sim game phase of his rehab soon. He’s not quite ready for a rehab assignment, but he’s not too far away. If the Pirates want him to make some 3-5 inning appearances first rather than having him go straight to six inning outings, this is a way to do that.

The perfect opener: Carmen Mlodzinski

Wait, what? Mlodzinski is back in the bullpen? Consider this speculation on my part, but assuming the rotation is healthy when Jones returns, I would argue having Mlodzinski back to the bullpen would be better for the team and him than just demoting him to Triple-A and staying a starter.

So Jones will need his innings monitored and Mlodzinski should probably still be semi-stretched out in case he needs to return to the rotation. What about a piggyback? Let Mlodzinski start by pummeling splitters and sinkers, and then Jones comes out with his rising fastball to blow hitters away up in the zone.

PIRATES TRIVIA

On this date in 1955, Roberto Clemente made his Major League debut and singled in his first at-bat. Which team did he face that day?

A. Dodgers

B. Cubs

C. Giants

D. Yankees

HE SAID IT

“I think me and [pitching coach] Bill [Murphy] are still figuring each other out. I had a few choice words for a couple pitches I threw yesterday and it kind of looked like he saw a ghost.”

– Jared Jones reflecting on his bullpen Tuesday

KEEPING MY EYE ON…

A quick look at three things I’m going to be watching for in this series against the Rays:

1. The Rays are…bunting? Have we shot the moon on analytics demonizing the bunt that it has actually become a viable strategy again?

The Rays have nine sacrifice bunts this year, tied with the Brewers for the most in baseball. They have six bunt hits, one behind the Diamondbacks for the most in baseball. Chandler Simpson is the fastest player in the American League and has shown he can get a bunt down. Cedric Mullins is also a prime bunting candidate.

The Pirates don’t have a proper third baseman with Jared Triolo on the injured list. I have to imagine the Rays will try to drop a couple down the third base line this weekend.

2. The Rays are… stealing bases? Is everything Moneyball preached dead?

Tampa has stolen 21 bases in 26 attempts this season, including seven for Simpson. Mullins and Richie Palacios also have three apiece.

The counter is the Pirates have Henry Davis, who has thrown out three of five would-be base stealers. He has an elite arm and pop time which should help him control the running game, but Sunday could spell trouble. Mitch Keller has a very poor track record holding runners, watching 61 runners steal a base compared to just five stealings since the start of the 2024 season. Assuming Davis catches Skenes Saturday, that would probably mean Joey Bart would get the start Sunday. Bart has a career caught stealing rate of 18.2%.

Sunday could be a storm of stolen base attempts. Walks could lead to disaster.

3. Marcell Ozuna had his best series as a Pirate against the Nationals. It looked like he was able to open up his hips and he was able to actually drive a couple balls to left field. A bloop or slice to right may be a hit, but he’s not going to drive the ball there. His slugging percentage is going to be to his pull side.

He is still 0-for-16 with seven strikeouts against offspeed and breaking pitches this year, so there are still holes in that swing that need to be filled. Few right-handers throw more changeups to right-handed hitters than Nick Martinez (34%), and Shane McClanahan pitches backwards with his slider, curveball and changeup. This is going to be a test for Ozuna, because he might not get as many fastballs as he did against the Nationals.

CHECK OUT THE PODCASTS

More shows! My weekly look around the league with Justice delos Santos is getting moved to being a standalone show with a different release date. More to come on that, but you can check out episodes here.

My newest episode of OffBeat (a daily show I’m doing with North Shore Nine) is on how Konnor Griffin carried himself after a tough error and loss on Thursday. New episodes will resume Monday.

And I’ll be recording another Alex Stumpf Show with Bucco Bantr this weekend. Keep your eyes out for that.

HOUSEKEEPING

I’ll be heading down to Texas for the Pirates’ series against the Rangers. Planning to talk to a former Pirate there. That’ll warrant at least one article here.

I’m debating if it’s better to keep the notes as simply postgame thoughts or if I should put transactions there too. I like the simplicity I have right now, so I’m leaning that way. For now, any transactions/other news is going to be available at AlexJStumpf on Twitter and alexjstumpf.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Also, I can’t tell you how lucky I am that Eddie Provident is letting me use his photography for these newsletters. Check out his work here and at eddiep_photos on Instagram.

TRIVIA ANSWER

A. Dodgers

Clemente’s first hit was off Johnny Podres of the Dodgers. He went 1-for-4 with a run scored that day, and the Pirates lost, 10-3.

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