With a shortage of starting pitchers, Pirates relying on relievers to finish the season

With four members of the starting rotation on the injured list, Derek Shelton promised he would get creative with his pitching staff. What exactly that involved, the Pittsburgh Pirates manager wouldn’t — or couldn’t — say.

“In terms of how we’re going to have to be creative, I can’t honestly tell you that,” Shelton said. “We are going to be creative, though, because we have innings to fill.”

Just call it TBD.

That’s what the Pirates did when listing their probable pitchers this week. Mitch Keller started against Alec Mills on Tuesday, when the Chicago Cubs visited PNC Park, and the Pirates plan to start prospect Roansy Contreras on Wednesday. Beyond that, the Pirates might as well flip a coin to choose which pitcher will be on the mound next.

After using a six-man starting rotation in August, the Pirates are trying to figure out how to manage their pitching staff for the final six games of the season. They placed lefty Steven Brault (lat strain) and right-handers Trevor Cahill (calf), Chase De Jong (knee) and Bryse Wilson (hamstring) on the 60-day IL, while righty JT Brubaker (shoulder) remains on the 10-day IL despite being eligible to be activated.

The Pirates are down to three starters — Keller, Wil Crowe and Max Kranick — and have relied heavily on relievers in three of their past five games.

“It’s challenging any time you lose four starters in a span of about three weeks,” Shelton said. “We’ve had to cover, I think this is the third one with a bullpen day. You get late in the year, and this is one thing we have to be mindful of: You talk about workload all year long, and now you’re asking your bullpen guys to give you eight or nine innings and their workload is up high. It’s a little bit challenging, but we need to figure out a way to play the last six games with it.”

The results have been mixed. Where lefty Sam Howard struck out the side in the first inning Friday at Philadelphia, the bullpen blew a pair of leads in an 8-6 loss. The Pirates used righty Connor Overton twice as an opener; where he left with a 6-3 lead on Thursday against the Phillies, he gave up four runs in the first inning Monday at Cincinnati. Overton was added to the 10-day IL on Tuesday with a right shoulder strain.

The pitching staff was overhauled at the deadline in late July, as the Pirates sent lefty starter Tyler Anderson to the Seattle Mariners, righty reliever Clay Holmes to the New York Yankees, lefty reliever Austin Davis to the Boston Red Sox and closer Richard Rodriguez to the Atlanta Braves.

What remains is a bullpen that features only four pitchers from the Opening Day roster — David Bednar, Howard, Chad Kuhl and Chris Stratton — alongside a collection of castoffs such as Overton, Anthony Banda, Enyel De Los Santos, Kyle Keller, Shelby Miller and Chasen Shreve and youngsters Nick Mears, Cody Ponce and Miguel Yajure.

The relievers covered more innings than the starters in four of the past seven games, accounting for all eight innings twice in the past four. That’s why Shelton made a point to credit Miller for pitching two innings in Monday’s 13-1 loss at Cincinnati, sparing the Pirates from going deeper into the bullpen.

Shelton, however, has resisted using converted starters Miller, Kuhl and Ponce in opening roles. Overton has made three starts for the Pirates, faring worse with each one.

“Yeah, it’s tough,” Overton said. “I’m sure you guys can see the bullpen is taxed, obviously, but we’re grinding through it and we’re trying to get through it. It’s the end of the year, and everyone is kind of fatigued mentally and physically. So we’re trying our best to get through it.”

The Pirates have turned to Ponce to work multiple innings in relief. Ponce, who opened the season as a starter in Triple-A, tried to keep a brave face after allowing four unearned runs in relief Monday against the Reds following an error by first baseman Colin Moran.

“Nobody really prepares for this,” Ponce said. “You never like to see anyone, whether it’s a starter or a bullpen guy, go down. You always want the health of all your teammates to be at the highest. Everybody wants to play every single day. We all want to go out there and compete at the best level which we can for the day and try to keep going forward, try to get the ‘W.’

“Right now, in the bullpen, we’re just going out there and doing our job, whatever we can, trying to just compete the best we can right now. That’s all I can really say, just compete as well as we can right now.”

The rest is TBD.