Pirates Notes: Chandler, Infield, Rodriguez

After months of anticipation, top pitching prospect Bubba Chandler’s debut didn’t disappoint — though it probably looked quite different than most fans had anticipated. Chandler tossed four shutout frames in relief of fellow well-regarded pitching prospect Braxton Ashcraft, earning a save in his first MLB appearance. Despite debuting in the ’pen, Chandler will be considered for rotation looks down the stretch, general manager Ben Cherington told reporters this weekend (video link via Colin Beazley of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

“He could still make starts,” Cherington said of Chandler. “But pitching in the major leagues is important. We wanted him to get that experience, get that feedback, and start it early enough where there was enough innings where it was a real experience that could inform his offseason going into 2026.”

Cherington went on to note that starts won’t be guaranteed and that manager Don Kelly “will guide” the decision on Chandler’s role from appearance to appearance. There’s no scheduled start on the immediate horizon for Chandler, who’ll turn 23 in a few weeks. Pittsburgh has Johan Oviedo, Mitch Keller, Ashcraft, Mike Burrows and Paul Skenes lined up, respectively, for its next five games. Logically, it seems fair to expect that Chandler could again follow Ashcraft in a piggyback role Wednesday, as the two are on the same schedule.

However he’s deployed, Chandler should reach a new career-high in innings pitched. He tossed 119 2/3 frames last year and is up to 104 innings this season with a bit more than a month remaining on the regular-season calendar. He’ll very clearly be in the mix for a rotation spot in 2026, so even narrowly edging his season-long workload past that 2024 mark would be beneficial as he eyes a first full year of rotation work in the majors.

Chandler’s MLB readiness isn’t the only long-term question the Pirates are focused on in the season’s final few months. In a full column highlighting some of Cherington’s comments — readers are encouraged to check it out for greater context on this and several more Pirates issues — Beazley writes that Pittsburgh’s GM feels infielder Jared Triolo has begun to prove his ability to handle shortstop on at least a part-time basis in the majors.

Triolo, 27, has spent the bulk of his big league career between second base and third base, but the Bucs have given him 15 games at short since being recalled to the majors following the trade deadline. While Cherington stressed that this doesn’t mean Triolo will open next year at shortstop, the Bucs also wanted to gauge how much of an option he is there. Konnor Griffin, the No. 1 prospect in all of MLB according to both Baseball America and MLB.com, is seen as the long-term answer but is only 20 years old and was only recently promoted to Double-A, where he’s played just six games thus far.

Cherington suggested earlier in the month that the Bucs will pursue infield help in the offseason and doubled down on that thought in his latest media session. A short-term addition at shortstop would be sensible. Any work Triolo is doing now would certainly strengthen his candidacy for a bench role, however, and it’s worth noting that he’s doing more than instilling Pirates brass with some confidence in his glovework. Dating back to his Aug. 1 recall, Triolo is slashing .324/.418/.500 (158 wRC+) in 80 plate appearances.

A lot of that production is due to a bloated .400 average on balls in play that he won’t sustain, but Triolo is also chasing off the plate less, walking more often, and more frequently making contact on balls within the strike zone. It’s a small sample, but there are some positive strides being shown, and if Triolo can keep that up for another month to close out the season, it’d bode well for his chances of having a steady role in 2026. He’s still hitting just .213/.308/.343 overall, but he’s a strong defender at second and third with good speed. The pieces for a solid utility option are there, if the bat can rise to even slightly below-average levels.

The catching role, of course, has been a question in Pittsburgh for years now. Several attempts to bring in high-end young players to claim the spot long-term have yet to pan out. Endy Rodriguez’s recent elbow surgery — his second elbow surgery since Oct. 2023 — further calls into question his candidacy for eventually claiming that role. Cherginton said after his recent surgery, however, that the organization still views Rodriguez as a catcher (link via Alex Stumpf of MLB.com).

Cherington called the 25-year-old Rodriguez (26 next May) “a catcher who we believe can be good at the position defensively and hit left-handed” and touted the value of having both left- and right-handed-hitting options behind the dish. Rodriguez’s long-term defensive outlook is something the Bucs will again visit in the offseason as he continues to mend, the GM conceded, but the idea of Rodriguez as a catcher isn’t one that the Pirates “want to give up on easily,” per Cherington.

Rodriguez hasn’t hit at all in limited big league looks yet, slashing just .210/.276/.311 in 261 plate appearances dating back to his 2023 MLB debut. Rodriguez missed nearly all of the 2024 season recovering from Tommy John surgery but had a monster 2022 season in the minors and hit decently in 2023’s Triple-A run before being called to the big leagues. He’s expected to be ready for next spring trainings but isn’t a lock to make next year’s roster.

Both Rodriguez and Triolo have one minor league option remaining after the current season, so next year’s camp won’t be a firm make-or-break for either player, but with both in their mid-20s and down to one option year, they’ll need to establish some staying power at some point within the next calendar year.