{"id":663285,"date":"2026-04-04T19:21:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T19:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/663285\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T19:21:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T19:21:39","slug":"it-only-took-2-games-for-guardians-to-get-tired-of-pirates-bullpen-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/663285\/","title":{"rendered":"It only took 2 games for Guardians to get tired of Pirates\u2019 bullpen disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hype around Konnor Griffin’s arrival<\/a> trumps pretty much anything else in the news cycle right now, but Pittsburgh Pirates fans may have missed a pretty funny turn of events while awaiting the debut of the No. 1 overall prospect in baseball.<\/p>\n

Colin Holderman, whom the Pirates non-tendered over the offseason, was just demoted<\/a> by the Cleveland Guardians. After two games.<\/p>\n

Who could have seen that coming?<\/p>\n

Pirates fans know firsthand what the Holderman roller coaster is like<\/a>. He looked the part of a relief ace in 2023 and 2024 before injuries sapped him of all effectiveness last year, but even his best seasons were marred by control issues and a lack of dependability in big spots.<\/p>\n

And, wouldn’t you know, it the Guardians sent him down to work on his command<\/a> (while also prioritizing flexibility during a difficult stretch in the schedule). He only tossed three innings in Cleveland thus far, but Holderman walked two batters and allowed a home run in that time, looking far more like the 2025 version of himself that pitched his way out of Pittsburgh than the high-leverage reliever from years prior.<\/p>\n

Colin Holderman’s short-lived Guardians tenure is a reminder that Pirates were right to rebuild bullpen<\/p>\n

Holderman is still only 30 years old, and thanks to a hard sinker that he can throw in the upper-90s, he’ll always have the potential to be a high-strikeout, groundball-heavy reliever that can shut down hitters from both sides of the plate. But this demotion is just more proof that he’s far from a finished product, which is exactly why the Pirates were wise to move on.<\/p>\n

In turn, their additions to the relief corps have already made a big impact. Mason Montgomery is wading through his own issues with free passes right now, but he’s striking out everyone else while looking the part of a dominant lefty reliever.<\/p>\n

Gregory Soto has looked even better, firing off four scoreless appearances to begin his Pirates tenure. An 11.8% walk rate is par for the course for the hard-throwing veteran, but it hasn’t been hard for Soto to work around trouble while striking out eight of the first 17 batters he faced.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Urquidy, meanwhile, is a surprise member of the bullpen after failing to win a rotation job in spring training, but he’s already recorded a save and figures to be a key piggyback starter in 2026. Like Soto and Montgomery, he gives manager Don Kelly more flexibility with managing the bridge from the starting rotation to closer Dennis Santana.<\/p>\n

Holderman was no longer able to provide the same benefit, hence why he’s gone. Cleveland, it appears, has found out the same truth the hard way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hype around Konnor Griffin’s arrival trumps pretty much anything else in the news cycle right now, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[5,135,51,2565,538,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-663285","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-guardians","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-guardians","11":"tag-clevelandguardians","12":"tag-guardians","13":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116348065004318833","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}