The Pittsburgh Pirates are teetering on the edge of a complete spiral.

Following a sweep on the road in Atlanta and dropping two of three while hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Pirates opened Bucco Luau weekend with an 8-3 loss at the hands of the Miami Marlins.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but it was the bullpen that provided the woes in yet another loss for the Pirates. At this point, every media outlet and writer in this city probably feels like one collective broken record.

In their latest loss, starter Braxton Ashcraft was able to hold the Marlins to two runs and left the game in a tie. But the righty was a little less efficient than usual, and after five innings his pitch count sat at 90.

With the Pirates keeping a close eye on Ashcraft’s innings, perhaps deploying a bulk reliever to piggyback off him was always in the cards for manager Don Kelly. But for the sixth inning, he called upon right-hander Wilber Dotel to take over for Ashcraft.

Dotel, a starter in the minor leagues, has made every appearance in his first season in the bigs coming out of the bullpen. Through his first seven games, Dotel put up 16.2 incredible innings, boasting an ERA of 1.08 to go along with 17 strikeouts.

On Tuesday, Dotel was lit up by the visiting Dodgers. Facing six batters and failing to record a single out, the 23-year-old surrendered five hits, a walk, and a home run en route to allowing six earned runs (two of which came after he exited the game) and turning a tied game into a blowout loss. He threw 29 pitches, limiting him for the next few days.

It was seemingly a rare occurrence for the usually dominant Dominican, but on Friday night, he again struggled. This time around, Dotel was able to secure five outs, but still offered up four hits, three walks, and four earned runs on 37 pitches in another game where his pitching put the Pirates on the wrong end of a lopsided score.

It’s hard to imagine that Dotel will continue to struggle as much as he has in his next appearance, but due to his new role as a bulk reliever, it will likely be days before we can find out for sure.

The same can be said for Carmen Mlodzinski. The ex-starter who was transitioned from the rotation back to the bullpen last took the mound Wednesday, during game two of the Dodgers series. The right-hander took over for Jared Jones, who is still on a pitch count and only went four innings.

In the sixth, Mlodzinski tossed two of his three walks and eventually offered up a grand slam to turn a 2-1 deficit into 6-1. Mlodzinski did rebound and pitched into the eighth, but it was certainly less than stellar work.

Having thrown 76 pitches in a game the Pirates eventually came back to win, Mlodzinski is out for several days now, possibly until the next time Jones makes a start.

And when it comes to assessing the bullpen, by far team’s biggest weakness and the thing that could sink this entire season, having two relievers doing what Dotel and Mlodzinski are doing is becoming a big problem.

Look, at this point, it’s hard to envision how this bullpen can get much worse. But one of the few things that can even further weaken this unit is a lack of options.

Having bullpen arms assigned for specific purposes is perfectly alright, but when two of the eight men are assigned to do the exact same role, a job that will take them out of commission for days at a time, puts an already abysmal bullpen shorthanded.

Because when arguably the best reliever in the bullpen, the one with a history of performing well in high leverage scenarios, is scheduled to pitch just once every five days, the Pirates are missing one of their better arms late in the game.

Since Mlodzinski is still cooling off from a starter’s workload, manager Don Kelly is without a usually strong option in games where he very much would have liked one.

And when the other bulk reliever is slated to regularly toss large amounts of pitches, and struggles in his outing, it causes two problems. One, it still knockes out Dotel for several days to not overload his arm, and it forces the Pirates to haphazardly throw other arms to clean up.

Mop up duties on Friday fell to Antwone Kelly, who made his major league debut and recorded his first seven MLB outs to close out the loss. Having thrown 33 pitches in that time, Kelly is likely out for tomorrow as well.

Right now, it feels like all the manager can do is throw his arms up and pray that whoever he calls out from the pen can get it together. Fans will get on him for deploying a certain reliever, but at this point everyone feels volatile. When the number of guys Kelly can even try is cut down by a fourth, it just puts him in an even tougher spot.

Having two bulk relievers was an unusual concept to begin with, but now it just doesn’t look sustainable anymore. This bullpen has far too many problems for that alone to fix it, but playing at full strength more often will at least give Kelly a larger arsenal to try and work with.

One of Mlodzinski or Dotel has to be taken out of games earlier and available more often. Or, in the event the Pirates option Dotel, whoever they call up has to be used as a traditional reliever.

A lot of changes are needed. This would be a start.