5-22-25 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X
Mike Burrows will make his 2025 debut with the Pirates after a strong past few outings down at Indianapolis, certainly earning a spot in this rotation.
Opposing him will see Aaron Civale, who returns to the mound today after spending much of the first two months of the year sideline with a strained left hamstring suffered during his first start this season.
The Pirates faced Civale thrice last season – once while he was with the Tampa Bay Rays (story here) and twice more after he was traded to the rival Brewers (here and here) and the wily righty had the upper hand each time as he combined for 17.1 innings pitched, 2 earned runs allowed off 12 hits and 4 walks with 14 strikeouts.
While Civale was roughed up in his only game thus far this season – allowing five runs off three home runs against the New York Yankees on March 30 but a combination of his injury, Yankees hitting and the newness of Torpedo Bats at the time likely played varying degrees of impact on his ineffectiveness.
He pitched in two rehab games at AAA and didn’t allow a run over 9 total innings with 3 hits, 2 walks and 5 strikeouts – much more an indication of the type of pitcher who we’ve struggled to figure out in the past.
Civale is going to work mostly with a high-80s cutter and low-90s sinker while adding in a high-70s curve, low-90s 4-seam with lesser-used sweeper/splitter in the low-to-mid 80s range.
He’ll work cutter/curve/sinker mix to lefties, running in against opponents while pivoting to sinker, cutter and sweeper running down and away from righties.
He has the tendency to hang the fastballs as all three home runs allowed in the Yankees game were courtesy of his cutter or sinker, so Bucs bats will want to try to stay on one of those two offerings if possible – specifically Bryan Reynolds (.875 OPS with 2 home runs through 16 at-bats against Civale) and Ke’Bryan Hayes (.500 BA and 1.250 OPS through 8 ABs) will be the ones to watch tonight.
Fun fact: Burrows and Civale both hail from Connecticut, growing up just an hour away from each other so this may be the Nutmeg State face-off for fans from New England. Hopefully, the younger Connecticuter can best the elder.
Steel City Pirates 