Pirates have fingers crossed that patchwork pitching staff can fill spots in starting rotation

Jun. 14—Their Steve Blass Award winner remains in Bradenton, the veteran they signed to eat innings is on the 10-day injured list for the second stint and their future staff ace has been demoted to Triple-A Indianapolis.

The starting rotation for the Pittsburgh Pirates is about as patchwork as a pitching staff can get, as injuries and ineffectiveness have taken their toll following a 60-game schedule and a trio of transactions in the offseason.

The Pirates traded their past two Opening Day starters — Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon — and parted ways with Trevor Williams. That was compounded by the injury to left-hander Steven Brault, who tossed a complete game last season and was voted their pitcher of the year.

While they wait for Brault to build back up after being shut down by a left lat strain, Trevor Cahill to recover from reaggravating his left calf strain and Mitch Keller to work to rediscover his fastball command in the minors, the Pirates are short on starting pitchers.

The Pirates have their fingers crossed that their probable starters for the three-game series at the Washington Nationals — right-hander JT Brubaker, lefty Tyler Anderson and righty Chase De Jong — can pitch with better efficiency so as not to take a toll on the bullpen.

"We're certainly not the only staff that's having to mix and match or lineup that's having to mix and match," Pirates catcher Jacob Stallings said. "So, yeah, our starters need to get deeper into games. They need to be more efficient."

Wil Crowe gave the Pirates five strong innings in Sunday's 5-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers, which is longer than Chad Kuhl, Keller and Brubaker lasted in their most recent starts. Only Anderson (3-6, 4.52 ERA) has proven to be a dependable workhorse, lasting at least five innings in all 12 starts. Cahill had gone at least five innings in his last four starts before his calf strain.

"That's your job, to try to survive," Anderson said. "Sometimes it's survival. Sometimes you're cruising. Sometimes it's a little bit of both. You just try to keep throwing as many pitches as you can and use as much as you can."

When Cahill returned from the IL, the Pirates planned to use him in relief but wanted to keep him stretched out if needed as a starter. So losing Cahill to injury hurts the Pirates in the rotation and the bullpen. That puts the onus on the remaining healthy starters to shoulder the load a bit longer than normal.

"It's dependent on us to pick up the pieces," Kuhl said. "We're in a very fortunate spot that we just have an absolutely incredible bullpen, and we can't give those guys enough credit for picking us up night in and night out."

That's a trend the Pirates can't afford to continue. Assistant general manager Steve Sanders addressed the starting rotation Sunday, when he filled in for general manager Ben Cherington on his weekly radio show on 93.7 FM. Sanders said the emphasis is less on a specific number of innings by starters and more so on pitching better.

"Not to oversimplify it, but our goal is to get efficient outs," Sanders said. "That goes for both the starters and the guys coming out of the 'pen. When a starting pitcher struggles to get efficient outs and pitch efficiently, that leads to more of those outs falling on the bullpen. I think we've seen in recent weeks that our bullpen has picked up a big portion of that. They've carried that really, really well, have performed really well and have kept us in a lot of ballgames. Obviously, it's important for the starting group to try to keep some of that weight off the 'pen."

In being swept in back-to-back series, the Pirates taxed their bullpen because of short starts. David Bednar, Clay Holmes, Chasen Shreve and Chris Stratton pitched in three of the six games. Pirates manager Derek Shelton shared his concern that fatigue could become a factor if the relievers are being asked to shoulder too much of the load.

"Our starters have got to give us more innings," Shelton said. "We've got to get deeper into games with our starters. That's extremely important because of the workload stuff with our bullpen guys."

Sanders said the Pirates continue to reach into the minors for spot starts, such as the one Crowe made Sunday at Milwaukee, and expects the rotation to "continue to evolve" by becoming more efficient. The Pirates also have used De Jong, Cody Ponce and Miguel Yajure in spot starts.

"Hopefully, we can get guys healthy and on turn," Sanders said. "But certainly we feel good about the group that we have and have to call on from Indianapolis thus far to come up and help us when we need a start."

Kevin Gorman is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Kevin by email at kgorman@triblive.com or via Twitter .