The Pittsburgh Pirates finally jettisoned the weak link in their starting rotation on Wednesday morning, demoting righty Carmen Mlodzinski to Triple-A. This should by all accounts be cause for celebration: Mlodzinski had put up an ugly 5.67 ERA over his first nine outings of the year, the only Pirates starter with an ERA below league average.
But these are the Pirates we're talking about, which means that even what should be good news somehow just makes fans even angrier. Did Pittsburgh use this opportunity to finally call up electric young righty Bubba Chandler, the team's top pitching prospect? No, of course not: Instead, Mike Burrows is on his way to Pittsburgh to start Thursday's game against the Milwaukee Brewers.
This isn't a knock on Burrows per se. He's been great this year in his own right, with a 2.51 ERA and 41 strikeouts in 32.1 innings at Triple-A so far this year. But he's not Chandler, MLB Pipeline's No. 2 overall pitching prospect who's been ticketed as Paul Skenes' future running mate for the last year-plus now. If this were strictly a meritocracy, the Pirates' choice would be obvious. But things can never be that simple with this franchise, and this latest move makes all too clear that Pittsburgh is more worried about saving Bob Nutting's money than winning games.
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Pirates keep playing games with top pitching prospect Bubba Chandler
We're past the point at which Chandler can have anything left to prove in the Minors; he's thrown 86 pitches in each of his last two starts, so it's not like he's not built up enough yet. And this isn't even a question of service-time manipulation: Even if Chandler were called up immediately, there's not enough season left for him to accrue a full year and bring him that much closer to free agency.
But Chandler hasn't had to be placed on the team's 40-man roster yet, while Burrows has. That means the latter can be promoted without forcing the Pirates to make a corresponding move. If they wanted to call up Chandler, someone else would have to go, and that's a financial sacrifice that Pittsburgh simply isn't willing to make.
Never mind the fact that there's dead weight up and down this roster — like, say, Tommy Pham, currently hitting .183. The Pirates are on the hook for over $4 million in salary for Pham this year, one of their only outside expenditures this past offseason. God forbid Nutting and Co. act with any actual urgency to put a better product on the field at PNC Park; instead, they'll just continue to tread water, always taking the path of least resistance rather than the one that could surround Skenes with the talent he needs to compete.