BRADENTON, Fla. — Pirates general manager Neal Huntington still has not decided on a fifth starter, but some other pieces of the pitching situation have started to come into focus with just two days left in Spring Training.
Huntington confirmed that Chad Kuhl has indeed secured the fourth starting spot and will begin his season with the third game in Boston. The competition for the fifth starting spot remains, but with three players instead of four, with Steven Brault being optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis earlier on Tuesday.
Huntington cautioned that just because Brault was the first one of the four to be removed from the roster, does not mean that he was the worst of the four in the estimation of the team’s talent evaluators. But with each starter going deeper into games and the number of games remaining rapidly shrinking, a decision point had been reached.
“We wanted to get him stretched out, Huntington said. “We like a lot of the things Steven is doing. We like where he is going to go eventually for us as a pitcher. We believe he is going to be a good major league starting pitcher. The challenge is we’ve got some guys ahead of him right now. We wanted to get him out as we run out of innings to get him stretched out and get him ready to make a start for us as soon as we need him.”
Brault was the only left-handed pitcher of the three, meaning that no matter who wins the battle for the fifth spot, the Pirates will open the season with five right-handed starters. Huntington downplayed the effect that will have and its importance in his decision-making process.
“We want the five best starting pitchers that we feel give us the best opportunities to win games and then depth behind that,” he said. “If we get though this year with five starters, chances are it’s been a really good year. So, we need to make sure we keep guys rolling. We have complete confidence Steve Brault can come up and win games for us in the major leagues.”
Huntington has suggested in the past that some of the losers of the fifth starter battle could end up in the bullpen instead of being sent to Indianapolis. Obviously, that was not the direction he desired to take with Brault, but he said that’s still on the table for the other three.
“One could,” he said. “It would be challenging for two, just with the bullpen numbers we have and wanting to make sure we leave ourselves starting depth. You’d like to have multiple guys in the Triple-A rotation who can make major league starts for you.”
Trevor Williams is pitching out of the bullpen on Wednesday, and he seems to be a particularly good fit for that type of role. That could mean that three-man battle is actually a two-man battle between Drew Hutchison and Tyler Glasnow. Huntington addressed the growing perception that Hutchison gets more chances than he may otherwise deserve because of the controversial fashion in which he was acquired.
“He’s going to have to earn what he gets here just the same way our other guys are,” Huntington said. “As we’ve talked, there has been positive signs from each one of these guys in camp, there’s been challenges from each one of these guys in camp. … Each guy has things that we like, each guy has reasons why they could or should be in the rotation or in the bullpen. How we acquire them is not one of the factors that we’re weighing at all.”
Glasnow, on the other hand is in a similar position that some of the Pirates’ other top prospects have been over the last few years. He’s dominated at the Triple-A level but has not even come close to replicating that success in the majors. What Huntington will have to decide is if Glasnow’s development will be best served in Pittsburgh or Indianapolis. Judging by his answer to my question about it, that’s something that he’s still wrestling with.
“I think we’ve been very aggressive in terms of getting guys out [to the minors] that we still think have significant development or even refinement,” Huntington said. “There’s also a time where the next step of development takes place at the major league level, and that will be a part of our decision process. There are times where you can learn things in Triple-A, and there are things where Triple-A can teach you things. There is also a time where the next step of development does need to take place at the major league level and that will be a part of the process with Tyler.”
This is the same decision Huntington wrestled with when it came to Gregory Polanco, Jameson Taillon and Josh Bell. He’s said that he felt that he rushed Polanco a bit and took his time with the latter two as a result. Will he do the same with Glasnow? Well, he’s not exactly clear.
“He’s dominated for a relatively extended period of time,” he said. “Understanding why he dominated, understanding how he dominated, understanding what was different at the major league level and can we get him somewhere in between that, and ideally back to a point where he dominated Triple-A and get him to a point where he’s executing those pitches up here that will have effect at the major league level. We’ll continue to weigh what went really well, why it went well, and then is he one of those guys where the next step in the development is at the major league level. Because every young player will have a development path that they need to take at the major league level. We just need to make sure we feel like that’s the right point in time to put them onto that path.”
