Pirates benefitting from outstanding work of Holmes, bullpen in past week taken in Milwaukee (Pirates)

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Clay Holmes.

MILWAUKEE -- After a successful homestand and a split to set up a rubber match with the Brewers on Sunday, it’s hard to disagree with Derek Shelton’s assessment of the Pirates’ recent stretch: “We've been playing pretty good baseball.”

The Pirates have won five of their past eight games since going 1-6 against the Cubs and Reds to start the season. Within that success, particularly in this past week, the most obvious bright spot has been the often dominant bullpen.

“We believe in each other, and there’s a lot of confidence,” one of the contributors to that effort, Clay Holmes, said. “We can go and get outs in whatever situation we need to keep the game close or to eat innings and put other guys in better situations for the next day.”

The group of relievers sport a 1.84 ERA in 29 ⅓ innings over the past seven games. 

When examining a bullpen at this early stage in the season, some wildly inflated numbers brought on by small sample sizes must be taken into perspective. The one reliever that’s rebounded the best after a rough beginning in a small sample ballooned his ERA to an absurd figure is Holmes. 

“It was one of those things where it didn’t really define where I was at,” Holmes said. “You can’t really dwell on those things. I just found things that I needed to do better next time and kept doing the things that were making me successful before.”

After his first three outings, Holmes held a 23.14 ERA over 2 ⅓ innings. But in 6 ⅔ innings since he’s only yielded one run and lowered that mark to 7.00.

“It was something I was pretty proud to come back from,” Holmes said.

Holmes pitched the final two innings of Saturday night’s 7-1 loss in Milwaukee. After allowing a base hit to Travis Shaw to start the seventh, the sinkerballer retired the next six Brewers he faced in order -- three via ground out and two punchouts.

“The first inning, I thought he was good,” Shelton said of Holmes’ appearance Saturday. “The second inning, I thought he was electric. The ball was jumping out of his hand.”

Holmes agreed with his manager’s assessment, saying that his second inning Saturday was the best he’d felt all year.

“It’s really fun to pitch when you have everything working and can command the strike zone,” he said.

The 28-year-old was limited to just 1 ⅓ innings after suffering a forearm strain in 2020. He was brought back to the club on a minor league deal and pitched 9 ⅔ scoreless innings in spring training. Holmes mentioned in the spring that his arsenal, which also includes a slider and curveball, mostly plays off of his sinker. And that strategy seems to be working as he’s gotten ground ball contact 68 percent of the time, which is nearly 10 percent higher than what’s been his career norm.

But he’s also getting a lot of whiffs and soft contact on his breaking pitches, which he says he’s used traditionally to retain a feel for the strike zone. Opponents are batting .143 against his curveball and the .250 average off his slider is nearly .100 points higher than the xBA, which shows some balls falling in hard luck -- which can also be displayed by the 75.2 mph average exit velocity against the pitch.

“The two breaking balls play off of each other, probably my best tunneling pitches,” Holmes explained. “I’ve made a conscious effort to find spots where I can pair them together, get myself in good counts. It kind of frees me up to let my sinker go, let it move and play versus trying to figure out where my sinker is going to end up or try to get too fine with it. 

“Going with that approach has kind of freed things up to get in better counts and let my stuff play. I think it’s showing with some of the contact.”

The rest of the group beyond Holmes has also been effectively stingy. Richard Rodriguez and Kyle Crick have each opened the year with five scoreless outings -- although the latter has not always made it easy for himself and has shown an unintentional flair for the dramatic.

Chris Stratton, David Bednar, Duane Underwood Jr. and the only lefty in the pen, Sam Howard, have all been remarkably reliable so far, combining for a 3.41 ERA in 29 innings. They’ve only given up runs in one or two of their outings.

Throughout the bullpen’s dominant stretch in the past week, the only blemish on their ledger have come from the struggles of a 21-year-old Rule 5 draft pick. Take away Luis Oviedo’s contributions, and the Pirates’ reliever crop did not allow a run in 25 ⅔ innings. He gave up five runs in 1 ⅔ innings in the series-opening loss to the Padres on Monday, and yielded another without allowing a hit over two frames in that series’ finale Thursday.

But the overall talents for Oviedo, who did not play an inning above Class A before this year, are worth it to suffer through some growing pains. Especially as a Rule 5 pick.

“He’s really talented, it’s a really good arm,” Ben Cherington said before Oviedo’s latest appearance Thursday. “Really encouraged by how he started his season. ... He’s a really, young, talented pitcher who’s pitching at the major league level. He’ll learn from that and bounce back. We’re happy he’s here.”

Oviedo has been compelling at times, but his biggest blow up -- the five runs allowed to San Diego -- came after a week-long layoff between outings. Shelton said after that game that he’s going to figure out the best way to properly deploy the young converted starter.

“That's different for a young kid like that ... that's on me to monitor going forward,” Shelton said the day after that ugly appearance against San Diego. “But this kid has really good stuff. ... Sometimes we guys that have pitched 10 years in the big leagues that come into games and don't pitch well because they don't have their good stuff. And last night [Oviedo] just didn't have his stuff.”

Michael Feliz was also throwing the ball well for the Pirates with just two earned runs allowed in 5 ⅔ innings. But he went to the injured list with a cracked fingernail in his right middle finger which plagued him throughout his past two outings -- in which he allowed just one hit over 2 ⅓ innings.

Taking Feliz’s place in the bullpen was Sean Poppen. In his team debut Saturday night, Poppen quickly meshed with the strengths of the unit after being activated from the taxi squad by working around some traffic in two scoreless innings Saturday night.

Shelton mentioned Friday when Poppen was activated that the right-hander can pitch multiple innings while, like Holmes, getting some outs on the ground. There’s an added importance to rostering many relievers with an ability to eat up more than one frame. Firstly, there’s the league-wide pitcher workload increase going from the pandemic-shortened 60-game season to a regular full season.

As a result of this, at least for the Pirates, the relievers will have to cover a lot of ground if starters are going short by design.

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