Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- One of baseball's top prospects has struggled badly in his first season as a big-league starter, putting his roster spot in serious jeopardy.
- The pitcher's command issues have created a bullpen burden that may be costing his team playoff contention.
- A key rotation replacement is set to return soon, making the decision to demote the underperforming starter almost inevitable.
Even with their improved lineup, the Pittsburgh Pirates are a team built around starting pitching. Paul Skenes remains otherworldly, Mitch Keller continues to be a steady innings eater, Braxton Ashcraft looks like a budding star and even Carmen Mlodzinski has been a nice surprise. But the team's fifth starter, Bubba Chandler, has been the fly in the ointment.
Chandler, one of MLB's top prospects at this time last year, has had a shaky start to his big-league career, and his last time out exemplified what's gone wrong. Chandler was able to strike out five batters in five innings against the Chicago Cubs, but he also allowed four runs on eight hits with two walks. His command remains shaky, and the Pirates should be reaching a point where they should want to send him back down to Triple-A.
Bubba Chandler is too unreliable to start games for a playoff hopeful
It's been easy to see at times this season why Chandler was such a highly touted prospect. Just a week ago, the righty allowed just three unearned runs in five innings in Toronto and struck out 11. In mid-April, he pitched six innings of one-run ball against a Rays team that currently has the best record in the American League.
Unfortunately, those good starts have been few and far between for Chandler, who has a 4.85 ERA in 11 starts and 52 innings this season. He's averaged just 4.7 innings per start, and he's completed six innings just once. Heck, he's thrown a pitch in the sixth inning just twice, while failing to complete five frames four different times.
Getting deep into games has been an issue for Chandler, and the reason why is that he has some of the worst command in the league: While he's been able to strike out a batter per inning, his 16 percent walk rate ranks in the fourth percentile, according to Baseball Savant. To put Chandler's struggles throwing strikes into perspective, he leads the Majors with 36 walks, five more than anybody else, despite not even having enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. That is a problem.
Pirates continue to lose games Bubba Chandler starts
In games not started by Chandler, the Pirates are 27-18, good for second place in the NL Central. Instead, they're 29-27, good for last place. Now, it isn't all Chandler's fault that he's 1-6, or that the Pirates have gone 2-9 in his outings. They've scored more than four runs just four times when he's started. But he deserves most of the blame for this record; he has not been good enough.
The Pirates have now lost seven consecutive Bubba Chandler starts.
— Dan Zangrilli (@DanZangrilli) May 28, 2026
They are 2-9 when he pitches in 2026.
The biggest reason for that is his inability to pitch deep into games. Again, Chandler has gone fewer than five innings (4) twice as often as he's thrown a pitch in the sixth inning (2). Consistently going just four or five innings puts an enormous strain on the bullpen, and Pittsburgh's bullpen, in particular, is not good.
The Pirates' bullpen is 18th in ERA overall and 27th overall in May. Chandler's inability to go deep into games forces one of the league's worst bullpens to be used for five or six innings repeatedly. That explains why, although Chandler left Wednesday's game in a 4-4 tie, the bullpen later imploded in a 10-4 defeat.
Pirates have a Bubba Chandler replacement on the verge of returning
It made sense for the Pirates to begin the year with Chandler in their rotation, and it made sense for them to stick with him. But at this point, his struggles are hard to ignore, and Pittsburgh is about to welcome back an obvious replacement: Jared Jones, arguably their second-best starter behind Skenes, just made what could be his last rehab start in Triple-A after over a year on the sidelines rehabbing from elbow surgery.
Once Jones returns, someone from the rotation is going to have to be bumped. While earlier in the year, it was fair to assume Mlodzinski would be the one to be moved to the bullpen, Chander's struggles make that decision rather simple. The Pirates should send Chandler down to Triple-A.
Doing so would keep him stretched out while allowing him to work on his command in a low-pressure environment. This does not mean the Pirates would be giving up on Chandler completely, but his struggles, paired with Jones' looming return, make it so that there's no other choice but to give Chandler a reset.
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