OnlyBucs

The Pirates have been shuffling one (bad) reliever after another through the major league roster in an attempt to find something that may work. At present, you need to check the roster daily to see who is in the pen.



Vasquez and Liriano (Hard to believe) have been great, and Crick has generally been good.



Today (emphasize today), the remainder of the pen consists of: Holmes (who has been showing some promise), Hartlieb, Rodriguez, McRae, and Davis. The Never man, Montana (sounds better using his first name), Feliz, Stratton and the perpetually injured Kela are hovering somewhere waiting for their turn to be pounced upon. And, don't really know how to classify Kingham and Brault, presently, the default starters.



Coming into the season I was concerned about the pen. The season long loss of both Santana and Kuhl hurt, as have Kela's injuries and Rodriguez's failures. The problem with the pen is similar to the current problem with the starting rotation. A team may be able to get by with the Never Man as your 7th and last resort reliever, but that approach doesn't work when you have the equivalent of 4 such pitchers in the pen.



I am not a Hurdle fan, but he is now essentially being pushed into a position of which game the team may have a chance of winning and saving Liriano, Crick and Vasquez for those games, and allowing the remainder to slide into blow-outs by pitching today's not-up-to-the task reliever.

I don't think the pen is an issue if you can count on more than 3-4 innings out of your starters. I'd wager that most teams have a pretty similar makeup to their pens.

I think it's a combination. I think most teams probably have some level of fodder as their 7th/8th guy in the pen. No team has a pen made up of a bunch of Vazquezes. To be sure, the injuries have hurt. If our pen had Kuhl and Santana in it, things might be different. Of course, if those guys don't get hurt, they probably don't sign Liriano.



Regardless, I think the makings of a good pen are there. If they can get Rodriguez right, and if Kela comes back and is right, that changes things drastically. That said, I agree with Sammy. the biggest issue in the bullpen is having to cover four, five, sometimes six innings every night. The starters need to be better and go deeper into games.

00080B3C2A0F2827490 wrote: I think it's a combination. I think most teams probably have some level of fodder as their 7th/8th guy in the pen. No team has a pen made up of a bunch of Vazquezes. To be sure, the injuries have hurt. If our pen had Kuhl and Santana in it, things might be different. Of course, if those guys don't get hurt, they probably don't sign Liriano.



Regardless, I think the makings of a good pen are there. If they can get Rodriguez right, and if Kela comes back and is right, that changes things drastically. That said, I agree with Sammy. the biggest issue in the bullpen is having to cover four, five, sometimes six innings every night. The starters need to be better and go deeper into games.




Chris Archer normally throws around 100 pitches with an out or two in the 5th inning. With Tallion and Williams on the shelf , they aren't going too deep.

Who is the Pirates best 4th reliever?



The answer is....right now they don’t have one!

In theory, Keone Kela. Which raises a question...he was rehabbing and had made a couple of appearances in Indy. They brought him back to Pittsburgh on Monday. If he’s ready, why isn’t he active? At his worst, he’s better than half the guys in our pen. At his best, he’s a notch below Vazquez.