Pittsburgh Pirates News: Team Outrights Nick Burdi

The Pittsburgh Pirates have announced they have outrighted an extremely talented yet fragile arm, and released another relief arm in the process.

In the most recent new for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team has announced a pair of roster moves for two of their relief pitchers. The first is that they have outrighted the talented, but oft-injured, Nick Burdi to Triple-A and released Dovydas Neverauskas.

Burdi has all the talent in the world, yet seems to have the worst health ever. A former Minnesota Twins prospect, Burdi was selected by the Philedelphia Phillies in the 2017 Rule 5 Draft and then was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for internatioanl bonus money. When the Bucs got the hard thower, he was in the process of rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and only ended up pitching 12.1 total innings between the minors and MLB in ’18.

The hard throwing right hander looked on his way to be one of the Pirates’ high-leverage relievers in 2018, but threw just 8.2 innings before a horrific-looking injury on April 22nd caused him to have thoracic outlet surgery. Burdi again looked like he was going to solidify himself in the back-end of the Pirate bullpen, but only got 2.1 innings into the season before tearing his bicep and causing him to miss the rest of 2020. After the season, Burdi had to undergo a second Tommy John surgery, and this led to his outright today.

It’s sad to see such a talented arm like Burdi suffer so many set-backs in his career. Burdi can throw a high-90s fastball to pair with a wipeout slider. FanGraphs currently ranks him as the team’s 30th best prospect. At the earliest now, Burdi will be back for the 2022 season, his age 29 season.

Neverauskas on the other hand has been given chance after chance to prove himself in the Majors but did not prove himself in his tenure with the Bucs. Back in 2016, Neverauskas looked like he could be one of the Pirates’ reliable relief arms with MLB Pipeline ranking him as the team’s 22nd best prospect. But since arriving in the Majors, Neverauskas has struggled time and time again.

In his career, the first Lithuanian MLB player has tossed 80.2 innings for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He’s given up 61 earned runs on 93 hits, 20 of which have left the park. He also has a 4.72 xFIP, 4.33 SIERA and 4.84 DRA. Among Pirate pitchers in history with at least 80 innings under their belt, Neverauskas has the 5th highest ERA (6.81), 4th highest FIP (5.94) and is one of six players to have an fWAR of -1.0 or lower. Neverauskas looks like he’ll head over to Asia to try and figure things out overseas.

Given the Bucs will be without Burdi for most, if not all of 2021, and now have released an arm they have constantly given a shot time and time again, the Pittsburgh Pirates relief pitching depth is getting thin. They’ll likely give the free agent market a look to try and add some depth with two pitchers out, and Keone Kela leaving in free agency.