Pirates are wasting bullpen progress because their biggest flaw won’t go away

For once, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ bullpen wasn't the easy target. That alone should have made Tuesday night feel like progress.

Mitch Keller gave Pittsburgh six strong innings against the Seattle Mariners, the bullpen showed signs of stabilization, and the Pirates had every opportunity to steal a game they badly needed before a brutal July stretch starts doing damage to their already fragile season. Instead, they lost 3-2.

The Pirates had nine hits and drew three walks. Seattle committed three errors. Pittsburgh had traffic all night, including enough free help from the Mariners to make this game feel more like one the Pirates had to actively avoid winning than one Seattle had to go take.

Yet the Pirates went 2-for-8 with runners in scoring position and stranded chance after chance. That has become the defining flaw of this team. It's not just the bullpen, the injuries or ownership’s refusal to meaningfully invest that's holding the Pirates back. It's that they keep finding ways to make the big moment look too big.

Pirates' lack of clutch hitting keeps costing them games even as bullpen shows signs of improvement

Isaac Mattson pitched a scoreless inning in relief of Keller on Tuesday and has looked more like the version Pirates fans came to trust last season. Yohan Ramirez has started to find the strike zone. Dennis Santana, Mason Montgomery, Evan Sisk and Gregory Soto have all had stretches that suggest this group might not be beyond saving. Carmen Mlodzinski can still help stabilize the back end if the Pirates stop overthinking his role.

There are still plenty of issues. The bullpen’s overall numbers remain ugly, and this group has walked too many hitters, hit too many batters and made too many games unnecessarily chaotic. But there has at least been some movement toward competence. The offense, meanwhile, keeps returning to the same dead end.

Opponents have produced a .674 OPS against Pirates pitching in low-leverage spots and a .665 OPS in medium-leverage situations. In high leverage, that number jumps to .804. The Pirates’ pitching staff has generally held up when the stakes are lower. When the game tightens, everything gets worse.

But Tuesday wasn't just about the pitching. Keller entered the seventh under 80 pitches before Pittsburgh native Cole Young spoiled his night with a two-run homer. Even then, the Pirates had already wasted enough chances to make that swing survivable.

A team trying to prove it deserves deadline investment can't keep letting winnable games slip away because it can't deliver one more hit. The Pirates are 39-40, one game under .500, and staring at a July schedule that could bury them quickly.

Bullpen progress only matters if the offense stops wasting it. And right now, the Pirates are losing the exact kind of games serious teams find a way to win.

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