Instant takeaways from Pirates opening series loss to the Marlins

3-30-25 – Ethan S. Smith – @mvp_EtHaN

Well, the Pirates began their campaign in the same stadium as they did last season, with four games against the Miami Marlins, who are projected to be one of the worst clubs in MLB this year. Last season, Pittsburgh rocketed out of the gate against the Fish, sweeping the four-game set. This year? Yea, not even close.

Miami won in walk-off fashion in all three of their victories over the Pirates, thanks to plentiful amounts of insanely good defensive plays and, well, the Pirates own mental errors.

Here are some takeaways from the Pirates opening series.

The bullpen questions will only get louder

Last season, the Pirates bullpen was an absolute mess, with David Bednar and Colin Holderman taking significant steps back from their 2023 form and all but cost the Pirates a true shot at a wild card berth last season during the August collapse.

Dennis Santana was a bright spot and returned, and the Pirates even added outside additions such as Joey Wentz, Justin Lawrence Tim Mayza and Caleb Ferguson to try and give the unit a boost heading into 2025.

Bednar appeared in three games in this series and exited with a 36.00 ERA, two losses, a 6.00 WHIP, four hits allowed, two walks and just one strikeout, yikes. Holderman wasn’t much better, tossing three innings and allowing three earned runs on four hits in three appearances, so once again, it appears the Pirates may have a serious back-end bullpen problem.

Santana, Mayza, Wentz, Borucki and Ferguson all showcased scoreless outings throughout the series, but a bullpen is only as good as its back-end, and if Bednar and Holderman continue to struggle, like they did in Miami, it could yet again cost this Pirates club more than any of the other numerous problems they have.

We’ll move to a bright spot though.

The starting rotation is once again the clear strength

Although the bullpen seemed to bring back some old habits from last season, the starting rotation looked solid in this series versus Miami.

Paul Skenes threw five and a third innings on opening day, allowing two earned runs on three hits while striking out seven along the way. Mitch Keller saw success, tossing six innings of one-run ball, allowing five hits and striking out four. Bailey Falter overcame some personal demons from last year’s debut in Miami, tossing six innings while allowing just two runs to score. Even Andrew Heaney, who had a putrid spring, tossed five quality innings on Sunday, allowing just one run on four hits.

The absence of Jared Jones of course brings the ceiling of this rotation down a bit, but each starter gave the team five or more innings without allowing more than two runs to score. To be blunt, those are games you have to more often win than lose if you want to be a competitive baseball team, and the Pirates didn’t do that this weekend.

Yes, many will, and should point at the bullpen struggles as a major factor as to why this series went the way it did, but also point out how well the starters did in the same light.

The Pirates currently don’t have a starter listed for their Tuesday matchup with Tampa Bay, which could indicate a possible call-up situation, but for now, it looks like the starting pitching staff is the clear strength of this club, its just a matter of if it will eventually get some help sooner rather than later.

The offense has to be better, but some signs of good faith are there

This was not a juggernaut that the Pirates faced over this four-game set. Sandy Alcantara made his first start in well over a year and was followed by Connor Gillispie (career 4.25 ERA), Valente Bellozo (career 3.58 ERA) and Max Meyer (career 5.50 ERA), not exactly a murderer’s row of starting pitching.

In all four games, Pittsburgh failed to score more than four runs and were outhit by Miami in three of the four games, but there were some positive signs throughout the series of an uptick in offensive production.

The Pirates offense, albeit not scoring enough, was making solid contact all throughout this series. Jack Suwinski was robbed of a home run on Saturday by Griffin Conine and the Marlins, for what it’s worth, played some of the better outfield defense you’ll ever see from a team across a four game series.

Despite that, the Pirates were 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position on Thursday, 3-for-8 on Friday, the only win, 3-for-18 on Saturday and 1-for-5 on Sunday. That totals out to 8-for-40 with RISP, a .200 average, which just won’t be a recipe for success and obviously won’t hold that low as the season continues, but its a cause for concern.

Like the bullpen, the offense has to support this starting pitching staff, or this team will go absolutely nowhere, that isn’t speculation, that’s just a fact, because we saw it play out that way last year, didn’t we?

Winning on the margins you say?

Let’s make one thing clear, Miami deserved to win this series more than Pittsburgh, with a major factor being that the Marlins took advantage of some very questionable decision-making from the Pirates all throughout this series.

The Pirates had three errors in this series, each one proving costly in its own way. On top of that, there were multiple instances of poor base-running decisions, ranging from sending Tommy Pham home on Saturday in a clear hold spot – looking at you Mike Rabello – to whatever “strategy” Ji-hwan Bae was trying to pull off in the loss Sunday when he entered the game as a pinch runner.

Now, the aggressiveness on the base paths, let’s hope it continues as the season progresses, because the Pirates are an above-average team in the speed department and have real base stealing potential, but they have to be better at picking their spots to do so, and with the right guys.

Decision-making is really what this portion is about. When a team comes out, publicly, and says they want to “win on the margins”, they flat out have to, because they aren’t as talented a team as say Los Angeles, Philadelphia or either New York squad, so they can’t afford mental, and well, physical errors on a day-to-day basis, against any team, including a Marlins squad that is likely staring 100-losses in the face.

Better decisions will, hopefully, come in due time, which takes us to the final takeaway from this series.

Take a breath, it’s four games

Many of you will probably want to punch your computer screen, but, folks, its four games.

There are 158 more of these things, and 158 chances for the Pirates to fix all that went wrong in this series and build on what went right. We as fans could be having a completely different conversation by this time next week, because the Pirates have proven they can get hot in the past, especially in April.

The Rays, like Miami, are a beatable team for the Pirates and, truthfully, any team is when the Pirates are playing their best baseball, which they weren’t in these first four games.

The argument can also be made that they aren’t fielding their best 26 players, because they flat out aren’t, with the likes of Nick Yorke and Billy Cook taking a backseat to guys like Bae and Enmanuel Valdez, but that’s decision-making from up top that is happening for a reason.

Thomas Harrington will be here at some point. Yorke and Cook will likely be here at some point. Jared Jones will come back down the line, Gonzales will get healthy after a stinger to his ankle on his home run, just, breathe folks, breathe, because this team has the makings of one that can be competitive, things just have to fall in place correctly for that to happen, and the team has plenty of time to put those puzzle pieces together.

On the flip side, maybe the puzzle never comes together, maybe we never see the final picture, but the season isn’t dictated on four games in March, its dictated over all 162, so let the team speak for itself and rebound from this opening series loss.