PIRATES

Members of the Pirates bullpen have had their share of good and bad moments to begin the season, but it seems as if the group is rounding into form during this road trip. 

In the 16 2/3 innings covered by Pirates relievers over the last five games, only two runs have been allowed on eight hits. There have been eight walks -- three from Wilber Dotel in the opener in Texas -- and a total of 19 strikeouts. It's those kind of collective numbers that have the starters raving about the guys tasked with following them in games. 

"It's just unbelievable," said Mitch Keller, whose five innings on Saturday were followed by five scoreless innings from Isaac Mattson, Mason Montgomery, Dennis Santana, Gregory Soto and Yohan Ramirez. "They're really good. I think anytime we have a lead, they're just gonna lock it down." 

Believe it or not, this bullpen is actually considered one of the better units in Major League Baseball. They rank seventh in ERA (3.29) and batting average against (.221) and 14th in WHIP (1.34), all while registering the third-most strikeouts (124) in the sixth-most innings (112). The walks (57) are the seventh-most allowed by a bullpen and have been concerning, but only nine bullpens have ultimately allowed fewer earned runs than the Pirates have (41) through 27 games this season. 

"There's a lot of confidence in that bullpen back there," Justin Lawrence said. "A lot of the times, people want to point their finger at the bullpen for whatever reason. I don't know if it's just an easy fault to look at, but we have a lot of confidence out there and we have so many guys that can handle the sixth through the ninth innings in high-leverage situations. I think that's important over the course of 162. Myself, right, no I didn't want to go through a rough stretch two weeks into the season, but we've had guys step up. Montgomery's been incredible these last three weeks, Mattson's Mattson and Soto and Dennis are obviously doing what they're doing in the back end. Even (Evan) Sisk, he's coming in in big situations and the results are speaking for themselves. Having the ability to have a bullpen that can pick guys up and being able to trust on more than one seventh-inning guy, one eighth-inning guy and one ninth-inning guy, it's huge in terms of success and being able to string together six, seven, eight, nine, 10 wins in a row, because at the end of the day, you can't run out your closer and setup guy for 10 wins in a row. You gotta have guys who can cover those innings."