The Pirates left Wrigley Field with a split of the kind that says plenty about where this team is right now. Their bullpen showed both ends of the spectrum in a three-game set against the Cubs: overwhelmed in one game, steady enough to slam the door in another, and right in the middle of a season that still has 12 games left and very little margin for error.
Pittsburgh dropped the series opener 12-2 on Sept. 11, fell 4-3 on Sept. 12, then answered with a 4-3 win on Sept. 13 to avoid the sweep. That put the Pirates at 75-75 overall, still 6.5 games out in the National League Wild Card race.
The bigger picture is simple enough. The Pirates just finished a 4-2 road trip after sweeping the Chicago White Sox at Rate Field from Sept. 8-10, but the bullpen remains a problem they can’t ignore. Braxton Ashcraft went down with an injury, forcing another bullpen game, and this one blew up fast.
Three rookie right-handers - Wilber Dotel, Khristian Curtis and Antwone Kelly - were asked to cover the opener, and the Cubs made them pay. The trio combined to allow 12 earned runs over eight innings.
Dotel gave up three runs across two innings in his first MLB start. Curtis was tagged for six runs and a two-run homer over three innings.
Kelly surrendered two runs in three innings.
That’s a brutal assignment for any young pitcher, and especially for three rookies who have shown promise at different points this season. Against Chicago’s lineup, though, the night turned into a reminder of how thin the Pirates’ starting depth has become. With Mitch Keller lost to a season-ending injury in early August, the club now has Bubba Chandler, Jared Jones and Paul Skenes as its only healthy starters.
That setup leaves Pittsburgh leaning hard on young arms to cover innings, and the next 12 games could say a lot about what that group looks like in 2027 - or about how badly the Pirates still need another starter next season.
The second game of the series gave the Pirates a real shot. They carried a 3-2 lead into the eighth and needed just one clean finish from a bullpen that has been better lately. Manager Don Kelly went to left-hander Gregory Soto, partly because Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstong, a left-handed hitter, was due up.
Soto started fine enough. He gave up a leadoff double, then recorded a fly out and struck out Crow-Armstrong.
But the inning unraveled from there. Soto lost the strike zone, hit two batters and walked two more, and the Cubs pushed across two runs to take a 4-3 lead.
Kelly had right-hander Yohan Ramírez warming up, but he stayed with Soto as the situation got away. The Pirates also had Luke Weaver, one of their stronger bullpen pieces, available after bolstering the relief corps at the trade deadline. Kelly said, in "hindsight," he should’ve had him ready to come in.
Kelly has generally handled in-game decisions well enough and has taken his share of unfair criticism, but this was his roughest move of the season, especially with the standings where they are. It’s the kind of moment that has to stick with him.
He responded in the finale by going to the bullpen before things fully slipped away. Chandler ran into trouble in the sixth, loading the bases with one out, and Kelly made the call to bring in Carmen Mlodzinski. The right-hander kept the damage to one run with a groundout, an intentional walk and a flyout, leaving Pittsburgh ahead 4-3.
From there, Mlodzinski worked a scoreless seventh, Weaver handled the eighth without allowing a run, and Mason Montgomery finished it off for another save.
That was the version of the bullpen the Pirates need to keep finding. Kelly used three of his best options at the right time and got a win over a strong Cubs team.
The talent is there. The challenge now is managing it properly through these bullpen games.
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