The Pirates are inching closer toward the 2025 debut (and Pirates debut) of first baseman Spencer Horwitz. The 27-year-old has yet to play this year after undergoing wrist surgery in February, but he set out on a minor league rehab stint yesterday and went 1-for-2 with a single and a walk in three plate appearances with Double-A Altoona. Horwitz will need several games in the minors before he’s up with the big league club, but it’s a positive sign to see him take the field.
With Horwitz injured, the Pirates have split first base reps up among Enmanuel Valdez, Endy Rodriguez, Jared Triolo and (more briefly) Matt Gorski. Valdez has connected on a pair of homers and held his own in 74 plate appearances. Rodriguez and Triolo have both struggled. Gorski was only just called up for his MLB debut a few days ago. He’s 1-for-4 with a homer. As a whole, Pittsburgh first basemen have combined for a .192/.286/.374 batting line on the season. The resulting 83 wRC+ (indicating they’ve been 17% worse than average at the plate) ranks 20th in the majors.
Horwitz, one of the Pirates’ key offseason acquisitions, should provide considerably more offense. In parts of two seasons with the Blue Jays, he slashed .264/.355/.428 with 13 home runs and 21 doubles in 425 plate appearances. He’s a .316/.433/.471 hitter in 945 Triple-A plate appearances.
Horwitz has primarily been a first baseman and started at first in yesterday’s rehab game, but he doesn’t necessarily need to take over full-time reps there. The former 24th-round pick has just over 600 innings of left field work in his pro career and another 434 frames at second base. Both positions have been even more problematic for the Bucs than first base.
At second base, the Pirates have seen Adam Frazier, Nick Gonzales, Tsung-Che Cheng and the aforementioned Valdez and Triolo combine to bat .200/.300/.303. In left field, the group of Tommy Pham, Jack Suwinski, Alexander Canario, Ji Hwan Bae, Frazier and Gorski has combined for a staggering .150/.220/.187. No team in baseball has received less production from its left fielders than the Pirates.
Wherever Horwitz slots into the lineup, he should give a boost to a Pirates team that is hitting .224/.304/.341 on the whole. Pittsburgh ranks 23rd in the majors in both runs scored and home runs. Pirates hitters are 26th in batting average, 23rd in on-base percentage and 28th in slugging percentage.
The pitching has been better in Pittsburgh, particularly in the bullpen. Pirates relievers rank 14th in the majors with a solid 3.65 ERA, and Pittsburgh has seven relievers who’ve tossed at least nine innings with an ERA of 3.38 or better. Unfortunately, their most dependable arm so far, righty Justin Lawrence, is out with an elbow injury. Pirates assistant GM Bryan Stroh rather ominously revealed yesterday that Lawrence is headed for a second opinion on that ailing elbow (link via Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). There’s still no firm timetable for Lawrence’s return, but Stroh already indicated that he’ll miss more than the minimum 15 days on this current IL stint.
Lawrence, 30, came to the Pirates via waivers this March and has been a terrific pickup. He’s fired 11 1/3 innings of one-run ball, holding opponents to just five hits. The former Rockies hurler has walked six batters and plunked another pair of hitters, casting some doubt on his ability to continue anywhere close to this level, but even with some expected regression in terms of ERA, the right-hander has looked quite intriguing thus far.
Lawrence is throwing more sliders than ever before and missing more bats than ever before. He’s also begun sporadically using a four-seamer after previously throwing a sinker as his only fastball. Lawrence has punched out a whopping 34.1% of his hitters, helping him to offset a 13.8% walk rate. His 14.5% swinging-strike rate is well north of league average and is way up from the 9.3% career mark he carried into 2025. An absence of some note would sting, and seeking a second opinion is an inherently worrisome update.
The rotation hasn’t been quite as sharp as the bullpen, due in no small part to Jared Jones’ elbow injury and early struggles from southpaw Bailey Falter and righty Carmen Mlodzinski . Falter gave up seven runs (five of them earned) in a start for the second time this season yesterday. The lefty blamed his inability to throw his offspeed pitches for strikes when assessing his performance after yesterday’s game (link via the Post-Gazette’s Colin Beazley).
Falter is now sporting a 5.93 ERA on the season. He and Mlodzinski (6.95 ERA) have both been weak points in an otherwise solid rotation. Each of Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller and Andrew Heaney have kept their ERAs under 4.00 — well under in the case of Skenes and Heaney.
The veteran Heaney has been an outstanding addition, giving the Bucs 31 1/3 innings of 1.72 ERA ball with a hearty 26.3% strikeout rate and a tidy 5.1% walk rate. The 33-year-old’s one-year, $5.25MM deal with the Pirates in March caught many off guard, but he’s been a godsend in the wake of Jones’ injury and has probably already made some clubs second guess themselves for passing on him when he lingered in free agency. The Pirates won’t want to talk about the trade deadline anytime soon, but as things stand, Heaney could be a nice arm for them to market if they can’t turn things around after an 11-18 start.
Naturally, with Jones ailing and both Falter and Mlodzinski struggling, there’s plenty of attention on the Pirates’ young arms. Thomas Harrington made a brief MLB debut earlier this season, but it’s top prospect Bubba Chandler who has Bucs fans buzzing the most. The 22-year-old righty is a consensus top-20 prospect in the sport and widely considered among the best four to five pitching prospects in particular.
Chandler is out to a brilliant start in Triple-A Indianapolis, tossing 20 1/3 frames with a 1.33 ERA, a 36.5% strikeout rate and an 8.1% walk rate. That comes on the heels of a 1.83 ERA in seven starts (39 1/3 innings) with Indianapolis late in the 2024 season. The Pirates have been cautious with the touted righty’s pitch counts early in the season, but he tossed a season-high 70 pitches in five one-hit frames his last time out.
Chandler may not be built up to the extent he was in his Triple-A run late last year, when he averaged 87 pitches and 5 2/3 innings per start, but he certainly seems stretched out enough to be a rotation upgrade in Pittsburgh. There’s no firm indication as to when Chandler might be promoted, but we’re fewer than away from the one-year anniversary of when the Pirates promoted Skenes under similar circumstances; Skenes made his MLB debut on May 11 last year.
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