The Pirates have had a unique way of handling some of their recent bullpen games.
With injuries plaguing their starting rotation and a front office that would like to play it safe (as much as they can, anyways) with their two young aces in Jared Jones and Paul Skenes, the team has been forced into some tricky pitching situations as of late.
To remedy that, the Pirates concocted a system that had righty reliever Carmen Mlodzinski start the game, before being lifted for Luis Ortiz, who then takes on a starter’s like workload to get the game into the later stages.
That idea first was implemented on June 8th, when Mlodzinski went 1.2 innings before Ortiz filled in for 4.1 innings in what ended up being a 4-0 Pirates win against the Minnesota Twins.
Pittsburgh opted for that again on June 14th, when Mlodzinski went 1.0 innings before Ortiz came on for 5.0 innings of work. In that matchup, Mlodzinski went scoreless and Ortiz surrendered a lone run in a 5-2 victory in Colorado.
Mlodzinski had found a way to be rather efficient in his pitching, and Ortiz, who started 15 games for the Pirates last year, had the pedigree to fill in multiple innings.
However, this wacky yet creative way to fill in the gap in their rotation finally lost their magic as the Pirates were blown out 10-3 at home against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Carmen Mlodzinski started once again, and went 1.2 innings against the Rays, who were sporting their Devil Rays look tonight.
Derek Shelton usually had a quick trigger with Mlodzinski when the team opted for this method, pulling him after his first real mistake. On June 8th, he was taken out after he plunked a batter; on the 14th, he was lifted after issuing a leadoff walk in the second inning.
This time, however, Shelton was more lax with Mlodzinski’s performance, despite him pitching about the same amount of innings. Mlodzinski allowed back to back singles in the first inning, but was able to get out of the jam.
Shelton probably wasn’t going to take Mlodzinski out in the first inning anyways, but it was evident that he was a little shaky. In the second inning, Mlodzinski secured a groundout for the first out, but then surrendered a single and a double to put two runners in scoring position.
Interestingly, Shelton waited to go to the bullpen until after the next batter, when Tampa’s Taylor Walls hit a sacrifice fly to open the scoring. After that, Ortiz came on and got out of the inning with a quick groundout to third base, but this was one of his few highlights on the day.
Ortiz went 4.0 innings and had his first truly bad game of the season. He allowed 10 hits and was charged for 6 earned runs against, with some of those coming off of 2 home runs. All of those figures were a season highs for Ortiz, whose ERA shot up nearly a full run as a result of today.
Ortiz has been very good this season, one of the most underrated stories around the Pirates this season. But he just didn’t have it tonight, at all. \
This experiment that the Pirates have been doing with this Mlodzinski/Ortiz was great when it worked in back to back games, but long-term it was never sustainable.
It’s been a product of a perfect storm working against the Pirates, with injuries to Martin Perez and his subsequent replacement in Quinn Preister really putting Pittsburgh in a bind.
It’s plausible to think that the Pirates might still be opting for a bullpen game if they wanted to give an extra day of rest to Jared Jones and/or Paul Skenes, but the injuries have forced the team to go for bullpen games more than anybody would like.
Josh Fleming has also been a relied upon name recently, taking the bulk of the early work on June 16th, going 4.0 innings for the Pirates against the Rockies in his first game back since being designated for assignment.
But when you have two starters that need to be handled with a little extra caution, the Pirates absolutely need a true fifth starter. These bullpen patchworks can only last for so long, and we saw that tonight.
Luckily for the organization, they may be getting one back rather soon. Veteran lefty Martin Perez has been on the Injured List for nearly a month, since suffering a groin injury back on May 26th that forced him to leave a start early.
However, Perez is apparently very close to returning. He is slated to pitch on a rehab assignment with Pittsburgh’s Triple-A affiliate, the Indianapolis Indians. According to Kevin Gorman of the Trib, Perez expects to throw around 75 pitches for Indianapolis as they takes on the Iowa Cubs.
He is one of several current Pirates who are in Indianapolis on rehab assignments as of right now. Catcher Joey Bart and outfielder Ji Hwan Bae are also appearing in Circle City right now as the team gets healthier. Bart left in the very same game that Perez did, and Bae has been on the IL since June 4th with a wrist sprain.
Perez, though, is the most important name to keep an eye on. In 11 starts for the Pirates this season, he has a 4.71 ERA and 1.552 WHIP through 57.1 innings pitched. He has gone at least 5.0 innings in 8 of those 11 games, and held his opponents to 3 runs or less in 7 of those games.
He hasn’t been All Star level, but in a role in the back end of the rotation, he is definitely serviceable.
Don’t get me wrong, Carmen Mlodzinski and Luis Ortiz are still valuable arms to this team. But the return of an actual starter like Perez can’t come soon enough.
(Featured photo by Charles LeClaire/USA Today Sports)
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