Carmen Mlodzinski will be comfortable in any role the Pirates want to use him, he's really done it all during his professional baseball career. But, after making his first start of the spring on Saturday in an 10-5 win over the Orioles, Mlodzinski said his goal has always been to be a starter.

"It's definitely something I'm pursuing as a career," Mlodzinski said after throwing two innings of four-hit ball and giving up two earned runs. "I think that's something I want to be able to do long-term, and ultimately be able to help the team as well."

Here's Mlodzinski's post-game interview:

During his time in the major leagues over the past two seasons, Mlodzinski has been primarily used as a reliever. He's started five games, but they were all as an opener and he's never thrown more than 2 1/3 innings in a game. However, he started 36 games in the minors with 22 coming at Class AA Altoona and made 14 starts at South Carolina and appeared in 26 games.

While he's been mostly a reliever since joining the Pirates, Mlodzinski said the door has never been shut on him becoming a starter again. When the Pirates moved him into the bullpen, he said they had a conversation and the consensus was: 'We're not fully closing the book on you being a starter for this organization."

The conversation was brought up during exit meeting at the end of last season and that thought process was still the same. So, heading into this spring, the plan was to let Mlodzinski's build up his volume to three innings and let him compete for a role.

"That was something that I felt like I needed to re-visit after a few years of being able to help this organization," Mlodzinski said. "Now, I want to move into a role to help them even more, and hopefully that's in a starting spot." 

There are challenges to that, but nothing that's new to Mlodzinski. He's been in that position before and knows that the first part of getting back into that role is building up volume over the next month and see where it goes from there. However, there's also difference in mentality of how to attack hitters over the course of a game compared to a relief appearance and he thinks he has the arsenal that would allow him to do that.

"I think a big thing for me is variability," Mlodzinski said. "I've definitely made adjustments each year through my career to be able to try to stay at this level, and I think that's something that can help me be stretched in a game instead of getting three outs or six outs. Having that variability can help me get through five, six, seven innings." 

Mlodzinski has a five-pitch arsenal, but relied heavily on just four of those pitches last season as he produced a 3.38 ERA over 50 2/3 innings. That followed up a year in which he made 35 appearances, threw 36 innings and built up a 2.25 ERA. 

The 6-2, 220-pound right hander threw his fastball 39.8% of the time while mixing in his slider (27.9%), cutter (20%) and sweeper (11.9%). He threw his change-up just three times. 

“It’s very impressive how he can manipulate the ball and consistently get the shapes that he wants," said Henry Davis, who caught Mlodzinski on Saturday. "Obviously, being a little bit more aggressive with the breaking balls in the zone early is something we talked about. When he’s ahead in the count, hitters don’t really have a chance.”

Saturday's opener started out great for Mlodzinski. In the first inning, he forced Gunnar Henderson to fly out, struck out Cedric Mullins and got Ryan O'Hearn to groundout after giving up a single to Jordan Westburg, which could've been ruled an error. 

The second inning got away from him a little bit though as he gave up back-to-back singles to start and a wild pitch allowed Ryan Mountcastle to score before Ramon Laureano drove home Jackson Holliday from second on a line drive to center field.

"I think all the stuff was there, it's just more of being able to execute early in counts is going to be able to get me quicker outs," Mlodzinski said. "I threw a few too many pitches today, I thought. But ultimately, avoided big damage. I was able to keep it to the low slug stuff. It's just getting ahead in the counts with your offspeed is going to open the door for having more efficient innings." 

No matter what role Mlodzinski fills, he'll be ready. A role like Luis L. Ortiz filled last year -- a long reliever and a spot starter -- is something that is on the table and would fit well for both camps, but he's ready for anything.

"I feel comfortable honestly in any role that they've thrown at me. I've done quite a few different things, like opening games the past few years, closing games -- only one. But, I've been kind of in that middle relief role," Mlodzinski said. "So, I'm comfortable kind of doing everything at this point. I think this is more just, this is what I want to do with my career and they're giving me an opportunity to kind of show that I can do it."