Pirates may have already made their Dennis Santana decision obvious

Dennis Santana has not recorded a save since April 15, and at some point, that stops looking like a coincidence.

The Pittsburgh Pirates don’t have to hold a press conference for the message to come through. Bullpen decisions usually tell on themselves, and right now, Pittsburgh’s actions are pointing pretty clearly toward Gregory Soto as the preferred ninth-inning option.

The Pirates are not closing the book on Santana, but they are managing like a team that needs cleaner answers in the ninth inning. Soto has the hotter hand, and with Santana’s recent outings getting harder to trust, Don Kelly has every reason to lean into the reliever who gives Pittsburgh the better chance to survive late leads right now.

Santana’s latest rough turn came in the extra-inning loss to the Phillies, when he worked the 10th inning after Soto had handled the ninth. Santana allowed a leadoff double and three straight singles without recording an out, taking the loss in an 11-9 game that Pittsburgh had every reason to win before it unraveled. Now, Santana has allowed multiple earned runs in three of his last seven appearances and has not logged a save since April 15.  

Dennis Santana’s slide has pushed Gregory Soto into the Pirates’ closer spotlight

The Pirates entered the season with enough ambiguity here that this was always possible. Santana was the favorite to lead the team in saves after finishing 2025 with 16 of them, including 10 after David Bednar was traded, but Kelly made it clear in March that Santana would not be the only option. Soto was already positioned as the next man in that pecking order, especially when left-handed bats made the ninth inning more matchup-friendly.  

That kind of language gives a manager cover. It lets him say the bullpen is matchup-based, fluid, situation-dependent and all the other things managers say when they are trying not to make fantasy baseball players happy.

But the actual games are harder to smooth over.

If Santana were still the trusted ninth-inning guy, he would be getting those spots. Instead, his save chances have dried up, his outings have gotten messier, and the Pirates have been forced to treat the back end like a live problem instead of a settled answer. 

Right now, Soto is getting the kind of trust Santana has lost. He hasn’t been flawless, but his overall line makes the Pirates’ shift easier to understand: a 2.42 ERA, four saves and a 0.85 WHIP through 22 appearances. Even with a few stressful moments baked in, Soto has still limited traffic better than Santana lately, and that matters when the whole point of the ninth inning is avoiding a five-alarm fire.

There is a little irony in using the Phillies game as evidence because Soto was not clean there either. He blew a three-run lead in the ninth before Santana’s 10th-inning collapse made the whole thing worse. So this isn’t a fairy-tale closer coronation. Soto has his own volatility. That has followed him throughout his career. 

Still, this is where the Pirates are. They aren’t choosing between perfection and chaos. They are choosing between the reliever who has recently looked more capable of surviving the ninth and the reliever whose role is shrinking in real time.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow