BRADENTON, Fla. -- The Pirates will open the season with a five-man rotation and either eight or nine more arms in the bullpen. They’ll need far more than that to actually get through the entire year.
"I don't think it's even talking about five," pitching coach Oscar Marin said when talking about the rotation. "I think we're talking about like 10 or 11. We’re gonna need some depth. We need more guys to develop than just five guys."
Where they’re going to find those extra innings and starts is still yet to be determined. They certainly have options, with 23 different pitchers currently on the active roster and even more in the way of non-roster invitees, but the question is how many innings can the Pirates actually count from them this year after the shortened 2020 season.
“That’s actually a fluid process,” Derek Shelton said in a Zoom call after practice Saturday. “Some of it happens organically in terms of how guys feel and what a guy’s doing. Some of it we will try to figure out just by using past data of guys. And some of it – a lot of it – is in an unknown. So to say we have the answer to that, no, we don’t. Is it something that we are talking about daily? Yes.”
Shelton forecasts the Pirates will need to get about 1,500 innings out of their pitchers this year. He had a series of conversations this winter with friends who are managers and pitching coaches, just trying to get the feel for how they’re going to manage workloads and get to that number.
“Nobody has the answer, except for trying to accumulate as much pitching as possible, then figure it out as the season goes along,” Shelton said.
The Pirates certainly did that this offseason, adding nine new pitchers to the 40-man roster. There will be more once the non-roster invitees are added.
While Shelton said at the onset of camp that the Pirates will have a five man rotation to open the season, they will probably have to make some adjustments or get creative at points throughout the year. Bullpen games, piggyback starts, a six-man rotation for some points. There are different avenues they could choose.
But will those extra starters already be on the team? There are two trains of thought when it comes to managing starter depth. One is to keep the player in Class AAA so they can pitch every five days and remain at full strength. The other is to put them in the bullpen and then stretch them out as the season progresses. Shelton doesn’t have a preference for which option he would prefer.
One of the pitchers who went through the latter process last season was JT Brubaker. Originally the Pirates put him on the opening day roster to provide depth and middle relief, but injuries to the rotation forced the Pirates to quickly change course and stretch him back out to a starter. After months of pitching only a couple innings each throw day, it took him about a month, or nearly half of the season, before he was able to go more than five innings.
Still, Brubaker preferred that over starting at the alternate site.
“I think, honestly, it's better, because you're actually facing these guys and seeing them consistently, even when you're not in the game,” Brubaker said. “You're just able to, mentally, get your reps in. So I think building up out of the bullpen in the big leagues is better, just for the simple fact that you're consistently getting mental reps and visual reps."
It’s worth keeping in mind that this isn’t going to be just a 2021 problem, either. As Brubaker pointed out, pitchers kept throwing throughout the shutdown and had their seasons end at the time they expected, so they had a full offseason to prepare. Brubaker predicts that pitchers that are fully stretched out this year might have problems in the future.
“The thing that I think concerns a lot of us is not only how it’s going to affect 2021 but ’22, ’23, ’24 with injuries to pitchers,” Shelton said.
MORE FROM PIRATE CITY
• As usual, the final day at Pirate City was a pretty light workout, mostly consisting of some basic fielding drills and batting practice.
Roansy Contreras, one of the pitchers the Pirates acquired in the Jameson Taillon trade, did throw some live batting practice to start the day. I didn’t get what his fastball was clocked at (it’s usually in the mid-90s), but the motion looked smooth and he was locating that fastball in the upper parts of the zone:
Contreras is already on the 40-man roster, but he isn’t a serious contender for an opening day roster spot yet. He needs a little more time in the minors since he hasn’t pitched above class A. He’ll be in the mix either later this year or 2022, depending on how aggressive the Pirates want to be with the 21-year-old righty.
• After making nine starts last year, Brubaker is in the mix to compete for a rotation spot again in 2021. He’s been working on his secondary stuff in camp, making sure his slider doesn’t have the same shape as his curveball. Those were his two best pitches last year, holding batters to a .204 average with his slider and .182 average against his curve.
As for what he took from that first year in the majors into the offseason, it was more mental than anything.
“The game doesn't change,” Brubaker said. “It's you vs. the batter, so I'm just making sure I don't do too much and stick with my gameplan."
• Oneil Cruz got a lot of work on the other side of second base Saturday, but that was because the grouping was mostly running shift drills.
The concern with Cruz as a shortstop is because of his height and ability to pick the ball. Shifting over to second isn’t a viable alternative, assuming he starts taking reps outside of being a shortstop, like Ben Cherington hinted might happen earlier this camp.
• In news from outside of Florida, the Pirates announced their spring training broadcast schedule. The full outlook can be found on the team site.
There will be 14 games broadcast on AT&T SportsNet and 18 games on the radio. There are seven games that will not be on either TV or on the radio, and will instead be webcasted at Pirates.com.
The first spring game is Sunday at 1:05 p.m. against the Orioles. The first television broadcast will be Mar. 2 at home against the Tigers.
