Pirates are testing fans' patience with baffling Jared Triolo loyalty

The Pittsburgh Pirates have spent the better part of this season asking fans to be patient. Patient with young pitchers. Patient with creative bullpen usage. Patient with the offense. Patient with injuries. Patient with development.

But patience has a breaking point, and the organization’s continued loyalty to Jared Triolo is starting to feel like a test.

The Pirates’ weekend against the Phillies was bad enough on its own. They blew 6-0 and 8-3 leads Friday night in a brutal extra-inning loss, then followed it with back-to-back shutouts Saturday and Sunday. If the club wants to call that a gut punch, fine. But it was also the kind of series that makes every roster decision feel magnified, especially when the Pirates lost Ryan O’Hearn — one of their most productive hitters — to a right quad strain.

That injury should have forced the Pirates to get more creative in a productive way. They did, to a degree, with their decision to call up Jhostynxon Garcia ahead of the upcoming series against the St. Louis Cardinals. But it has also only made their Triolo loyalty harder to explain.

Triolo has value. He won a Gold Glove as a utility player in 2024, was a finalist again in 2025 and has handled just about every defensive assignment the Pirates have thrown at him. First base, second base, third base, shortstop, right field, even an emergency inning on the mound — Triolo’s versatility is real.

But versatility is only valuable if the production justifies the playing time. Right now, it does not.

Triolo has been in the lineup every day since returning from the injured list, despite batting just .220 with a .538 OPS. For a player whose primary selling point is defense, the shortstop metrics are not helping his case, either. He is already worth minus-2 defensive runs saved there this season, which is especially concerning for a glove-first player.

So why are the Pirates still doing this? Why is Triolo being treated like an everyday fixture when the offense is desperate for answers? Why is he being shoehorned into right field, a position where he had played all of two major-league innings before this weekend, while Nick Yorke — who actually has outfield experience — gets optioned to Triple-A?

That is the part that should frustrate fans most. This is not simply about Triolo struggling. Players slump. Defensive specialists have offensive limitations. Utility players get exposed when asked to play every day. The issue is that the Pirates keep acting as though Triolo’s roster spot and lineup presence are untouchable, even when the evidence suggests they should be reevaluating it.

Jared Triolo is not an everyday player, and the Pirates need to stop treating him like one

Saturday’s experiment in right field was a perfect snapshot of the problem. Triolo nearly made a sliding catch on Trea Turner’s leadoff liner, but the ball popped out of his glove. He later took responsibility for a throwing error on a relay play after Bryce Harper’s double.

To his credit, Triolo did not hide from either play. He owned them. He also handled the assignment about as professionally as anyone could expect from a player learning a position on the fly. But that does not make the decision any less baffling.

The Pirates are not in a position to treat major-league games like a defensive laboratory. Not after getting swept by Philadelphia. Not with O’Hearn on the injured list. Not with an offense that just went 18 consecutive innings without scoring. Not when they have actual outfield options in the system.

This is where the frustration becomes less about Triolo and more about the organization. Triolo is doing what he is asked. The Pirates are the ones continuing to ask too much of him.

There is a role for Triolo on this team. A true utility role with late-game defense and spot starts around the infield makes sense. But everyday at-bats, shortstop reps despite poor early defensive returns and right field starts in the middle of an offensive crisis? That is where the logic starts to fall apart.

The Pirates cannot keep preaching meritocracy while handing everyday opportunities to a player who is not hitting and no longer providing airtight defensive value at the positions where he is being used most. They cannot keep telling fans they are trying to maximize the roster while optioning players with clearer offensive upside or more relevant positional experience. And they definitely cannot keep asking fans to accept “versatility” as a catch-all explanation when the results are this underwhelming.

O’Hearn’s injury created a real problem. The Pirates' immediate response only amplified one of the season’s most confusing trends: the team’s insistence on finding a place for Triolo, no matter how awkward the fit.

At some point, loyalty stops looking admirable and starts looking stubborn. The Pirates are already testing fans’ patience with the way this offense disappears for days at a time. Their baffling commitment to Triolo as an everyday player is only making that patience thinner.

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