Holderman and Bednar are out of the picture for the time being. What now?
Just 10 games into the season, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ hopes for their back-end bullpen duo to have a much-needed bounce-back season have diminished. David Bednar and Colin Holderman have carried over the bad mojo they created last season, and neither is now on the active roster just a week into this season. Although both have struggled for many reasons, it was evident from the first two series of the season that neither made any legitimate adjustments in the offseason.
Every hitter in baseball is just sitting on Bednar’s fastball at the top of the zone while his curveball and changeup hold no weight. As for Holderman, he has almost too many pitches in his arsenal to the point that he has completely lost his identity. Holderman once had one of the best four-seamer sinker combinations in the game. However, an overuse of a variety of offspeed pitches he has no command over has led to Endy Rodriguez trying to scoop 99 mph sinkers in the dirt. Since the 2024 All-Star break, Holderman has a 7.08 ERA.
Both have talent, and both have had some bad luck. But with poor execution comes lousy luck. The Pirates’ coaching staff has not done enough to help Holderman and Bednar get back on track.
The Pirates’ upper management has failed to create a solid backup plan for two backend relievers on a downward trajectory heading into this season. This offseason, they prioritized depth over signing a big-name player to support the backend, unlike their move with Aroldis Chapman in 2024.
It made sense considering they had young guns in Carmen Mlodzinski and Kyle Nicolas, who proved last year that they could control their high-end stuff and come through in high-leverage situations.
However, neither is an option right now — and it’s not due to injury. Despite boasting a considerable amount of starting pitching depth throughout the organization, the injuries to Johan Oviedo and Jared Jones somehow allowed for Mlodzinski to be stretched out as a starting pitcher, a role for which he was drafted in the first round of the 2020 MLB Draft. Mldozinski expressed his desire to return to being a starting pitcher in Spring Training, and the Pirates felt this was the right move for Mldozinski and the rotation.
But in Mldozinski’s first start, he looked… well, a lot like a reliever. He looked as sharp as a knife in the first two innings against Tampa Bay, like a guy you would want to bring in to close out a game. But by the fourth inning and 50 pitches in, he looked exhausted, and his velocity wasn’t the same. The Rays put up a four-spot, leading to his exit after three and two-third innings pitched.
This isn’t to say that Mldozinski won’t work out as a starting pitcher — although his tendency to work at an exhaustingly quick pace while always pitching from the stretch are concerning as a starter — but he would be much more valuable to the team in the bullpen after what has transpired to begin the season. It’s unclear what their plan is for Thomas Harrington, but I don’t see the problem with him getting a feel for the big leagues as the fifth man in the rotation and then reevaluating once they are ready to bring up Bubba Chandler. There has been talk of a six-man rotation, but this feels unnecessary and unproductive if you’re trying to get Paul Skenes the ball every fifth day.
Kyle Nicolas has elite stuff and was the most improved reliever last year once he got a hold of his command. Nicolas should have been on the roster after a solid Spring Training, but the Pirates had to keep players in their bullpen who had no options left, making Nicolas the odd man out.
With Holderman landing on the 15-day IL, Nicolas was the first person to mind who might get recalled, but it was RHP Chase Shugart instead, who was acquired from Boston in the winter and had only pitched in seven career big-league games.
The Pirates’ hesitancy to bring up Nicolas is probably due to his 14.73 ERA in his first three appearances in Triple-A Indianapolis. Hopefully, this is an outlier, because the Pirates desperately need someone with his arm talent in the back end of the bullpen.
Currently, the Pirates rely on a combination of left-handed pitcher Ryan Borucki and right-handed pitcher Dennis Santana to close out games in the eighth and ninth innings, based on matchups. Santana has been consistently good for the Pirates since being picked up off waivers in the middle of last season, and continues to look comfortable when called upon in the ninth inning. Borucki has looked like his 2023 self after adding a splitter to his arsenal, but he had an ominous appearance in a save opportunity on Sunday. In fact, Borucki is now 0-for-5 in his major league career in save opportunities, which suggests that he should stick to a seventh or eighth inning role, especially when left-handed hitters are due up.