Coming into the 2024 Major League Baseball season, there was cautious optimism surrounding the Pirates here in Pittsburgh.

After a 14-win improvement to go 76-86 last season, there was some hope that this season could see the Pirates post their first winning season since 2018, and just their second since 2015.

Headlining that belief was the return of Oneil Cruz, who missed essentially all of 2023 with an ankle injury, along with the continued improvement of young Bucs to help cement the foundation of a steady Pirates team.

The biggest sign of optimism however was the bullpen. Ranked near the top of baseball last season, the Pirates’ bullpen had only seemed to only get stronger in free agency when they picked up a marquee name in Aroldis Chapman and added some other veteran arms as well.

With a relatively unproven team at the plate, the hope was that if the Pirates can stay in the game or get in the lead by say, the sixth inning, they should be winning a lot of games in 2024. Their bullpen was supposed to be the saving grace for a team that was desperate to turn their fortunes.

Since then, those who have been called upon have routinely let the team down. What was supposed to be the team’s greatest strength has turned into their poison; multiple arms are sporting unfathomable ERAs as the team’s starting pitchers, who were a big-time question mark coming into the season, are by and large outperforming their relieving counterparts.

This startling theme was never more prevalent than in Pittsburgh’s home series vs the Chicago Cubs. The Pirates dropped two out of three to their NL Central rival and nearly were swept in the series thanks to blunder after blunder from the bullpen.

On Friday night, reliever Hunter Stratton was taken to the cleaners by the Cubs, allowing 4 earned runs to put a one-run game entirely out of reach.

On Saturday, despite ultimately getting the win, the bullpen combined for the worst stretch of pitching I have ever seen in my life. Kyle Nicolas, Josh Fleming, and Colin Holderman combined to walk in seven runs and flip a 6-1 lead completely on its head.

And on Sunday, the Pirates had fought their way to extra innings before Aroldis Chapman was dinged for 2 runs, and a replacement in Nicolas threw a passed ball that scored a Cubs run, which stood as the game winner.

How did things get this bad for the Bucs?