The slow offseason of Major League Baseball is underway, and the Pittsburgh Pirates have started off the baseball lull with a few puzzling moves regarding their bullpen.

The Pirates opted to cut right-hander Dauri Moreta, a high-energy reliever loose. At the same time, the Pirates decided to keep righty Yohan Ramirez for the time being.

After a rollercoaster season on the mound, Ramirez was speculated as a potential non-tender candidate for the Pirates, but instead, the organization sought to bring him back and worked out a one-year deal worth a reported $825K.

Ramirez signed a minor league contract with the Pirates ahead of last season. For the Dominican native, it was his second stint with the organization. He previously pitched for the Pirates in parts of the 2022 and 2023 seasons, where he totaled a 3.67 ERA in 61.1 combined innings. Oddly enough, each individual season also saw him post a 3.67 ERA. Talk about stats of the weird.

He started the year in Triple-A, where he pitched 31 innings to a 3.19 ERA, 1.258 WHIP, and 3.42 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He filled in as a closer from time to time in Indianapolis, picking up seven saves and being the final pitcher in about half of his 27 appearances.

He was called up to the big leagues just days before the All Star Break, and he stuck around in Pittsburgh’s bullpen for the rest of the year. Ramirez tossed 33.1 innings for the Pirates in 2025, amassing a 5.40 ERA, 1.470 WHIP, and 2.81 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Ramirez is a tricky pitcher to figure out. Not necessarily because he has some crazy arsenal (although he does have a few nasty pitches), but more so because you never know what version of him you’re going to get. He’s incredibly inconsistent.

The thing about Ramirez is, when he’s on, he’s really on. When everything is clicking, he honestly looks like one of the better pitchers in baseball. But he is far too prone to blowups. For as good as he can look on the mound, hr can look just as bad later in the same week.

His first two games as a Pirate were a perfect example of this phenomenon. In his season debut, he threw two scoreless innings with four strikeouts. His first two punchouts caught the batter looking.

On a day where Pirates pitching looked exceptionally poor, giving up 12 total runs, Ramirez shined. He was just one of two Bucco arms that day to hold the opponent scoreless.

Six days later, in his first appearance coming out of the All Star Break, he was on the mound for 1.1 innings, but had surrendered two hits, two walks, and a wild pitch. His effort allowed four runs to score against him. Even with that, he notched three strikeouts, but an out-of-hand game got much worse.

That is the kind of up-and-down experience that Ramirez brings out of the bullpen. It feels like almost a coin flip as to what type of reliever is going to walk out onto that mound.

The consistency problem goes beyond just the eye test and the vibe check.

Control is also an issue for him. To his credit, his walk rate has come down considerably; when he made his major league debut in Seattle in 2020, he was walking a batter pretty much every inning. Since then, his walks per nine is sitting just a hair over four.

However, he still has a tendency to go wild. He was charged with four wild pitches, one shy of the team lead. The problem with that is, the three players tied or ahead of him had at least twice as many innings as he did. Mitch Keller, who was tied for the team-leading five, pitched over five times as many innings as Ramirez did.

At the same time, however, Ramirez led the team in strikeouts per nine. Posting a 12.2 figure, he narrowly beat out David Bednar for the lead. It was the best strikeouts per nine he has posted in his major league career. Over half of his appearances saw him record multiple strikeouts.

Do you see what I mean? This guy is so unpredictable.

That unpredictability also makes it hard to see where he fits into the bullpen next year, assuming he makes the team out of spring training.

Last season, he was used mostly as a bulk reliever. Of his 24 total appearances for Pittsburgh last year, 11 of them were longer than an inning. Of those 11, seven of them went at least two innings. He accounted for nine outs twice.

I have to imagine that the Pirates probably deploy him in a similar role this season. In the event the starter for the Pirates doesn’t go as long as manager Don Kelly hoped, Ramirez can help bridge the gap between the starter and the late-inning guys.

The 30-year-old is out of minor league options, so it’s do-or-die for him heading into spring training in 2026.

In the end, I guess I don’t mind giving him another shot. In terms of picking between Moreta and Ramirez, it feels like the Pirates picked the guy with a higher ceiling, but lower floor. He’s the more boom-or-bust choice of the two pitchers.

There’s some intriguing stuff about Ramirez’s game. Including the Pirates, he’s pitched for six teams over the last three years, including putting on four different MLB uniforms in 2024.

You could read that as one of two ways: teams are always giving up on him, or teams are always jumping on him when he becomes available.

This fall, the Pirates decided they didn’t want to give another team a chance at nabbing him. We’ll see if that decision was worth it.