The final spot in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ bullpen is still up for grabs, and the competition is thinning out. The Bucs optioned top relief prospect Brandan Bidois to minor league camp and traded Kyle Nicolas to the Cincinnati Reds. Carmen Mlodzinski is also making a run for the rotation. With the regular season less than two weeks away at the time of writing this, plenty of relief pitchers have made it clear they’re making a serious bid to be on the Pirates’ Opening Day roster.
Three Pirates Who Have Made a Serious Opening Day Bullpen Case
Mike Clevinger
Mike Clevinger’s Spring Training has come out of nowhere. The Bucs signed Clevinger to a minor league deal, likely with the expectation he could provide some experienced depth. Clevinger has pitched just 21.2 innings over the previous two seasons. Injuries and off-field issues have derailed a once-promising start to his career. However, Clevinger now looks like he’s ready to put things back on track.
Clevinger has pitched 12.1 innings in Spring Training with the Pirates. In that time, he has allowed six earned runs, nine walks, and 11 K’s. However, the results do not reflect how promising his Spring Training has been. Clevinger is averaging 95.2 MPH with his fastball and is topping out at 97. The right-hander’s four-seamer averaged just 93.2 MPH in 2025, didn’t touch 95+ MPH once, and hasn’t hit 97+ in the regular season since 2023.
All of Clevinger’s other pitches have looked good as well, gaining velocity, movement, or both. He has induced a whiff rate of 31.8% and has held opponents to just an 85.3 MPH exit velocity. It’s hard to ignore Clevinger’s case to make the Pirates’ Opening Day bullpen. He’s throwing hard again, and it’s helped him induce plenty of swings and misses.
Evan Sisk
The Pirates acquired Evan Sisk at the 2025 trade deadline as part of the Bailey Falter trade. Sisk only pitched 17.2 innings in the Major Leagues last year, but allowed only seven earned runs, one home run, with a 50% ground ball percentage, and induced 25 K’s. Sisk also had a whiff rate of 31%. The left-hander’s FanGraphs Stuff+ clocked in at an impressive 106 mark.
Sisk has pitched six innings in Spring Training, allowing just two earned runs, with seven K’s. Sisk is also getting whiffs better than nearly anyone in baseball right now. He has a 43.6% whiff rate. 299 pitchers have thrown at least 100 pitches in Spring Training thus far. Only seven hurlers rank ahead of Sisk in this regard. 15 pitchers in total have a whiff rate above 40%.
The Pirates already have two lefty relievers making the bullpen between flamethrowers Mason Montgomery and Gregory Soto. However, Sisk takes a very different approach than they do. While Montgomery and Soto both can hit triple-digits, Sisk only comes in around the low-90s. He throws from a low and wide arm angle and has well above-average extension off the mound. Given how well he has done in Spring Training, how promising he looked last year, and the different view he can give opponents, Sisk has a legitimately strong chance of making the Pirates out of the pre-season.
Yohan Ramirez
Yohan Ramirez returned to the Pirates for his second stint in black and gold in 2025. He pitched 33.1 innings, with a 5.40 ERA and 1.47 WHIP, but struck out 29% of opponents. His 1.08 HR/9 ratio was also about league average. Ramirez struggled to limit free passes with a 10.3% BB% and had both a below-average 89.7 MPH exit velocity and 13.3%-barrel percentage. However, Ramirez performed well across many other metrics. The right-hander had a sub-4.00 xFIP (3.76) and just a 3.34 SIERA. He also had a 104 FanGraphs Stuff+. He was also in the 94th percentile of extension at 7.1 feet.
So far, Ramirez has tallied 6.1 innings in Spring Training. He already has five K’s and has only allowed two free passes. The right-hander has also only allowed one earned run in his brief Spring Training play. Ramirez is getting whiffs at an impressive 32.7% rate. Along with a healthy whiff percentage, opponents are having a hard time making quality contact against him. They’ve managed just a 79.9 MPH exit velocity and 5.9%-barrel rate in the small sample size.
What may give Ramirez an inside track to the final bullpen spot is his roster status. He is out of options. If the Pirates want to send him down, they will have to expose him to waivers first. His bottom-line results may not have been very pretty in 2025, but the stuff he showed, his underlying numbers, and his solid Spring Training performance in 2026 make it difficult to give up for very little potentially.
Main Photo Credits: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images
