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Pirates Release Ryan Borucki

By Anthony Franco | August 19, 2025 at 9:55am CDT

The Pirates released veteran reliever Ryan Borucki, according to the MLB.com transaction log. That was the expected outcome after Pittsburgh designated the southpaw for assignment on Friday. Borucki has more than five years of service time and had the right to refuse a minor league assignment, making the release a formality.

Assuming no team claims Borucki off release waivers, he’ll be a free agent. The Pirates will remain on the hook for the rest of his $1.15MM salary, while a signing team would pay him the prorated $760K league minimum rate if he gets an MLB opportunity. If he does sign somewhere, it’d likely come before the beginning of September. Players need to be in an organization by September 1 to be eligible for postseason play. They don’t need to be on the 40-man roster by that point, so Borucki would be playoff eligible even if he signs a minor league contract within the next two weeks.

The 31-year-old would be a long shot to make a postseason roster but should get attention from teams seeking left-handed relief depth. While he has struggled to a 5.28 earned run average through 30 2/3 innings, his underlying marks are a little more intriguing. Borucki has kept the ball on the ground at a huge 55% clip while posting slightly worse than average strikeout and walk marks.

Borucki recently returned from a six-week absence due to a lower back injury. He reeled off five straight scoreless outings upon coming off the IL, but he gave up three runs in an inning of work in Milwaukee last week. The Pirates designated him for assignment after that, calling up lefty Evan Sisk to take his spot in the bullpen. Sisk is a 28-year-old rookie reliever, so the ceiling isn’t exactly high, but the Pirates liked him enough to acquire him from Kansas City in the Bailey Falter deadline deal. It’s understandable they’d rather take a look at Sisk for the final six weeks of the season than continue pitching Borucki, who was headed for free agency at season’s end.

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41 Comments

  1. TheMan 3

    2 months ago

    I wonder if Nutting will scold Cherington if no other team signs Borucki and he’s stuck paying for a player no longer with the team

    3
    Reply
    • ronnsnow

      2 months ago

      He already cleared waivers so the Pirates are paying him no matter what. If he signs elsewhere its for the minimum ontop of his Pirates salary.

      1
      Reply
      • TheMan 3

        2 months ago

        Yes, I read the article
        Are you related to Dream by chance ?

        Reply
    • Acoss1331

      2 months ago

      I think Bob Nutting would be one of those owners that, if for example, the Pirates were to go over the first luxury tax tier, and Ben Cherington had not been able to offload players to duck under that threshold, Nutting would probably fire him on the spot.

      4
      Reply
      • ronnsnow

        2 months ago

        Cherington should have been fired on the spot last year for not perusing Jazz Chisholm and instead getting Bryan De La Cruz.

        1
        Reply
        • AI GM

          1 month ago

          He went after Jazz hard. Marlins preferred a catcher and fell in love with the Yankees one.

          1
          Reply
        • ronnsnow

          1 month ago

          No he didn’t go after him hard. Ben Cherington has never gone after anyone hard, except maybe Spencer Horwitz and former Blue Jays relievers with a 6+ ERA.

          Reply
        • AI GM

          1 month ago

          Well you can add Jazz to that list as well.

          Reply
  2. Baseball trade conspiracies

    2 months ago

    Cherrington is the biggest idiot. He used most of the money that was budgeted to him,for analytics.

    2
    Reply
    • TheMan 3

      2 months ago

      And from what I’ve read, Nutting wasn’t happy about that

      1
      Reply
      • Baseball trade conspiracies

        2 months ago

        Yes uve heard the same thing. Maybe this will change the water nutting runs the pirates.

        Reply
    • mlb1225

      2 months ago

      The best teams are the most analytical. I think the problem is Cherington does not know how to best use analytics to the team’s advantage.

      Reply
      • mlb1225

        2 months ago

        If anything, I’d say the Pirates aren’t investing enough into their analytics department. According to their directory, they only have 18 employees running their R&D department. The Brewers, Guardians, Rays, and Tigers, all of whom have low to middle-market payrolls, have 25+ members of their R&D, data engineer, or player data analysis departments.

        Of course, they need to invest more in general. Bob Nutting has no excuse not to give his GM more to work with, both in terms of acquiring players and investing into the team’s data analysis departments. But if you’re not going to invest in free agents, at least give him some more people to work with in the R&D and data analysis departments.

        1
        Reply
        • Mendoza Line 215

          1 month ago

          The Pirates have plenty of analysis personnel.
          They need better position player development and hitting coaching personnel.
          It does not matter a bit to analyze something that is not good in the first place.

          Reply
        • mlb1225

          1 month ago

          Two things can be true at the same time, and both departments both benefit from more/better employees. They have less than 20 members of their R&D and data analysis department, when good teams have 25-30+.

          Reply
        • mlb1225

          1 month ago

          These aren’t mutually exclusive things or departments. The point of a R&D/analysis staff is to find players who have something that stands out, things that can’t simpily be seen through scouting alone. The point of the player development staff is to develop that player, and get the thing the R&D department found working.

          Reply
        • Mendoza Line 215

          1 month ago

          What are examples of things that cannot be seen by scouting alone?
          Are you saying things like left handed batters hitting left handed pitchers well?
          Are you sayings things like hitting certain types of pitches well?
          Are you saying things like right handed hitters hitting to right field well?

          Reply
        • AI GM

          1 month ago

          Entire analytics department needs fired along with pitching coaches except Strom. Fire Cherington Williams as well. Giddy up giddy up 409

          1
          Reply
        • mlb1225

          1 month ago

          No, those are simple splits. MLB teams are way more advanced than that. Put it like this: if you can find the numbers on Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, or even Baseball Savant, they’re probably not major stats being used by MLB teams. We have so much technology that can help us develop new ways of analyzing the game. Eyes alone can only tell a person so much about a player. A scout alone can’t make up a predictive model based on data gathered from all the tracking technology we have today. Every team today has their own Stuff+ model, which is essentially designed to tell you how ‘nasty’ a pitcher’s pitches are.

          1
          Reply
        • AI GM

          1 month ago

          You tell em bright eyes

          Reply
        • mlb1225

          1 month ago

          It’s not just Stuff+ either. Every MLB team probably has their own set of metrics they developed themselves to evaluate players. Only team that may not have that is the Colorado Rockies, who had a single analytics employee as of 2020.

          1
          Reply
        • Mendoza Line 215

          1 month ago

          Do they compare the analytics and predictions with real life occurrences after the fact?
          In other words do they know how accurate their predictions are in case they need to modify them to become more accurate?
          In other does someone who is not analytics driven say whether they are useful or not?

          Reply
        • mlb1225

          1 month ago

          I would like to think they compare what their predictive models say vs what happens after the fact, and I think that is part of the problem. The Pirates don’t have good predictive modeling and they haven’t really improved it that much over the last handful of years.

          Reply
        • Mendoza Line 215

          1 month ago

          As an aside I saw maybe 3 or 4 years ago that 1 WAR was worth $8m.My point is if the same knuckleheads who calculated that and did not verify it which could easily be done then some of these other predictive numbers may or may not be accurate because we do not know whether the predictive analysis has ever been varied.
          I have no problem with condensing actual facts into easily useable data.
          But predictive analyses need to be verified to prove to be at least reasonably accurate.

          Reply
    • smrtbusnisman04a

      2 months ago

      Neil Huntington did the same thing. Only Huntington produced results

      2
      Reply
      • mlb1225

        2 months ago

        That’s what I’m saying. Huntington knew how to take advantage of the analytics of his time. Cherington does not.

        3
        Reply
        • Mendoza Line 215

          1 month ago

          Neil came in at the start of analytics.
          He was the first to use extreme shifts.
          After his first three years and before his last three years he was a fine GM.

          Reply
        • mlb1225

          1 month ago

          It’s sad to see where the Pirates are now in terms of analytics. It wasn’t just shifting, but the Pirates also revolutionized catcher framing. Sadly, they’ve probably been behind the new-aged information curve since 2017-2018.

          Reply
        • Mendoza Line 215

          1 month ago

          They have been behind a lot of things since 2017-2018.

          Reply
    • TheMan 3

      2 months ago

      nothing says arrogance more than being just a plain moron

      Reply
  3. smrtbusnisman04a

    2 months ago

    So….. Bubba Chandler ain’t coming up this year?

    Also why did we hire a hockey guy as our team president.?

    Reply
    • Harvbanger

      2 months ago

      Have you been paying attention to Bubba’s pitching in Indianapolis?

      1
      Reply
      • smrtbusnisman04a

        2 months ago

        Yeah he’s frustrated that he’s not being called up… because the Pirates are choosing a figth with the players association even though they rake in $$ Millions a year in Luxury Tax Savings

        1
        Reply
        • mlb1225

          2 months ago

          If he is that frustrated to the point where he is putting up an ERA of almost 6.00 and is averaging only about 4 innings a start since June at Triple-A, then that’s on him to settle down, not the Pirates’ job to promote him if his emotions get that much in the way.

          Reply
    • AI GM

      1 month ago

      Hockey guy is irrelevant to whether he can do job or not.

      1
      Reply
      • Mendoza Line 215

        1 month ago

        Cherington has always needed a baseball person on top of him.
        This president is more of a business person who cannot help Cherington do his job.
        The Phillies had such a setup with MacPhail and Klentak but both did their jobs poorly.

        Reply
  4. For Love of the Game

    2 months ago

    In the old LOOGY days, Borucki’s extreme splits would have made him a pretty decent lefty option. Now him primary value would be in situations where he’d face two lefties in an inning or to finish off an inning. He’s probably destined for some team’s AAA roster.

    1
    Reply
  5. holecamels35

    2 months ago

    Sisk looks potentially really good. We’ll see. They seem to short leash a lot of their pitchers and send them up/down after one bad outing.

    1
    Reply
    • Mendoza Line 215

      1 month ago

      And they are missing Falter and will continue to do so.
      He may not have the stuff and could go downhill but he has pitched well for the Pirates and provides depth if nothing else.

      Reply
      • mlb1225

        1 month ago

        If we’re missing Falter, then we’re at our last line of defense on the depth chart. He’s been awful in KC, and has been bad every month but May.

        Reply
        • Mendoza Line 215

          1 month ago

          I think that his era was in the mid 4.5’s every other month.
          That is not good but much better than Heaney and as good as their other starters not named Skenes.
          I have always said that Falter was a better long man out of the bullpen.

          Reply

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