Pittsburgh Pirates: Tyler Lyons Sticks with Organization

The Pittsburgh Pirates recently made some roster moves to bolster their bullpen.  One relief pitcher had was put on waivers to do so.

Let’s face it, the Pittsburgh Pirates have had a lot of bad luck with injuries this year.  While this should not be used as an excuse, as all teams have injuries, the Bucs have seemed to have an enormous amount of bad luck with it.  However, the team did do a decent job this offseason of bringing in enough veteran depth on minor league contracts to be able to fall back on.

This was the idea when the Pittsburgh Pirates brought in Tyler Lyons.  Lyons signed with the Bucs this past offseason on a minor league deal with an invite to Spring Training.  He pitched effective enough in Spring Training to earn a spot in the Bucs’ organization.  The team started him in Triple-A and quickly needed him after just one month due to the number of injuries to the pitching staff.

When starters Chris Archer and Jameson Taillon hit the Injury List, the team, unfortunately, had to move relievers Nick Kingham and Steven Brault to the rotation.  In turn, this opened two spots in the bullpen which had already lost Nick Burdi.  Furthermore, Keone Kela has struggled with being able to throw multiple days in a row this year which effectively limits the bullpen even more.

So the team called up veteran lefty Tyler Lyons to help eat some innings.  He did not have a ton of success in his outings.  He threw a total of three games and gave up five earned runs across his four innings of work.  This gave him an ERA of 11.25, albeit a very small sample size.

However, the Bucs must not have been very impressed with what they saw from the lefty and decided to send him back to Triple-A by designating him for assignment.  In turn, the Bucs called up pitching prospect Montana DuRapau in his place.  They had to DFA Lyons to make room on the 40 man roster for DuRapau.

When being designated for assignment, a player is sent through the waiver wire.  Any team can claim the player as long as they add them to the 40 man roster.  This often happens with veteran relievers during the year as teams are always looking for bullpen help.  Well, according to MLB.com’s transaction page, Lyons cleared waivers and will report back to Triple-A Indianapolis. While he was not great in his time up, this is still good news as the team is able to keep a veteran relief pitcher for down the road.