The Pirates announced that they’ve designated left-hander Tyler Lyons for assignment. His roster spot will go to right-handed reliever Montana DuRapau, whose previously reported promotion from Triple-A is now official. The Bucs have also recalled righty Clay Holmes, who’ll step into the vacancy created by the placement of Keone Kela on the 10-day injured list (right shoulder inflammation).
Lyons, 31, appeared in just three games for the Pirates, during which time he surrendered five runs on six hits and three walks with five punchouts in four innings of relief. His results dating back to the 2018 campaign are ugly, though they only span a total of 20 2/3 frames.
Prior to that stretch, Lyons enjoyed a three-year stint as a quality bullpen piece with the Cardinals, pitching to a combined 3.33 ERA with 9.7 K/9, 2.7 BB/9 and 1.3 HR/9 over the life of 162 innings of bullpen duty. Lyons’ 2017 season was particularly impressive, featuring a career-best 11.3 strikeouts per nine innings pitched as well as a 2.83 ERA and 2.86 FIP to match. The Pirates had hoped he’d be able to round back into that form but apparently didn’t see enough promise in Lyons’ stuff to look past the ugly, small-sample results.
As noted yesterday at the time DuRapau’s promotion was reported, the 27-year-old righty is a former 32nd-round pick who has been lights out in Triple-A to open the season. Through his first 14 1/3 innings, he’s allowed one run on five hits and five walks with 18 strikeouts and a 46.2 percent ground-ball rate that marks a dramatic improvement over his previous ground-ball tendencies.
Can we just DFA Michael Feliz already?
Yes please!! He’s been nothing but crap since he’s been here.
I understand there are injuries, but you’re telling me there was nobody else you could have brought up? JT Brubaker, and Jeff Hartleib are also doing well in AAA. The same with Clay Holmes. Both Hartleib and Brubaker were doing better than Holmes by a margin. I’m not so sure about calling up a guy to the MLB who has more walks than K’s in AAA this season.
Likely a 40 man roster issue
Brubaker is injured right now. I agree about Holmes,
Yes!
both him and Never Get Anyone Out also
It’s Never Ask Us to get anyone out!
Another great outing last night. 1 inning 5 runs on 4 hits and 1 walk but we won’t DFA him since he struck out the side
Feliz isn’t a big league pitcher. Neither is Brault… or Neverauskas. I don’t anticipate Holmes being any sort of savior either. Very disappointing as it seemed as recently as last season that they had pitching depth, and this year we get this disaster of a bullpen and can’t seemingly do anything about it. The injuries to Kuhn and Santana are proving to be worse than the OF injuries.
*Kuhl, not Kuhn
Dude has 150 appearances in The Show with zero track record of success. Feliz has no business being in the bigs.
I don’t see the Pirates even in the wild card hunt this year. The offense isn’t the greatest and that bullpen has blown a handful of leads. Now you have Tallion and Archer (expected to be back maybe next week) out. Add all the position players on the IL and the major pieces from last years bullpen, on the IL or out for the season, it doesn’t look real good. The 3 clubs in front of the Pirates are playing very good baseball and I don’t see the Pirates keeping pace with them. Hopefully they end the year .500 or above. But I can’t see them being in any playoff hunt this year. It feels like a rebuild all over again.
Good riddance but will Holmes be any better?
In a word, no. The guy walked 23 batters in 26 big league innings last year, and actually had worse numbers so far this year in AAA. This isn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel, this is punching a hole through the bottom of the barrel and scraping the pavement.
He also had a great outing last night, 2 innings only 3 runs
Throw him to the Lyons den.
Holmes has 2.04 WHIP in AAA this year. Good luck with that.
Worst Holmes since Will Ferrell.
The one change that needs to be done is to move on from Hurdle
It’s not hurdles fault the minor leagues lack talent and nothing was done over the offseason to improve the club and organization. They should just sell the team to someone who will actually do something and put a better looking club on the field. Someone who will open their pocket book and sign some worthwhile Free Agents. Someone who will actually focus on winning the championship. Not this current ownership who only puts out a .500 club at best.
Okay but the fact remains that Hurdle uses the players at his disposal poorly. Take a look at the Rangers game where he left Feliz in after he walked the bases loaded just for him to serve up a grand slam. He should have been pulled. That’s on Hurdle
He is always resting players, he never heard of Cal Ripkin. Reynolds comes up and hits in every game and Hurdle then rests him, a young player wants to play everyday, he is not 35 years old.
As far as pitchers it seems that there is always a couple of guys unavailable, did they go to the movies? I don’t see where resting relief pitchers have eliminated injuries as someone is always getting hurt.
Clint’s problem with resting pitchers is he thinks that he can portend the future.Both Crick and Vasquez were available Thursday night but he probably wanted to save them for the Cardinal series the next night.
That is wise if (1)you are not trusting that Michael Feliz will bring home the bacon,and(2) you do not foresee a 17-4 blowout where he could have picked two of us to pitch better.
He is not smart enough to know the future.
I think that he is a generally a good manager but he has no mandate to win,does not have the energy any more to do so,and is not quite good enough to win with the lack of reasonably good ML depth that he only had for a few years.
Sometimes a change for the sake of change is a good thing,even if the manager is not doing a bad job.
I think that it is this time for the Pirates.
Panj-I do not think that they were at the movies as Nutting is too cheap to pay for their tickets.
They were probably eating chicken in the clubhouse as the Red Sox were doing a few years back.
He treats these relievers like they are China dolls.
He is smart in not overworking them but he does not tax them enough in important situations.
It does seem to me,however, that ML pitchers are experiencing more and more arm problems every year.
I’ve never thought that Clint Hurdle is anything special as a manager, but I’m having a tough time pinning much blame for this season on him. He’s been given a bunch of spare parts to fill a lot of roster holes.
I agree that he doesn’t have a great roster, but there have been some close games that the Pirates lost late due to Hurdles bad game management.
It was Hurdle’s loss yesterday,and a good manager does not lose games.
That being said,the lack of urgency in getting at least one or two good relievers to take Kuhl and Santana’s spots by NH this winter doomed the Pirates to mediocrity again.
Injuries occur,and the Pirates have generally been blessed in recent years.The outfield replacements of Melkman and Reynolds have been the two best hitters.
I thought that Lyons had a chance to do well but he was a no show.
Feliz is just no good as he cannot throw the ball over the plate often enough.
Holmes will be a bad nightmare like he was in the Brewers series last year.
I think that Brubaker has some talent but he is hurt.I am not sure how well it works though when they instantly try to turn a minor league starter into a major league reliever.
I have always hoped for Neverauskas but he is quickly running out of chances.
I think that Brault does have some talent but he has not shown well when he has gotten several chances.He then became the last man and has not pitched enough to be effective.
NH needs to change his position on decent free agents or this franchise is doomed.
What’s that Office Space quote again? Neveraus .., Neverask, … uh Never gonna work here anymore.