Pirates promote righty reliever

The Pirates have optioned righty Carmen Mlodzinski to Triple-A Indianapolis and recalled 25-year-old righty Mike Burrows, the team announced. Alex Stumpf of MLB.com reported earlier this morning that Mlodzinski would be optioned out in favor of Burrows, who’ll start tomorrow’s game.

It’s a notable change in the Pittsburgh rotation, though not the one for which most Bucs fans have been pining. The Pirates have righty Bubba Chandler, widely regarded as the top pitching prospect in baseball, dominating in Indianapolis but will keep the 22-year-old flamethrower in the minors a bit longer.

That’s not to say that Burrows, a well-regarded pitching prospect himself, isn’t deserving of a look — far from it. He’s been excellent in Triple-A this season. The 6’1″ righty was an over-slot 11th-rounder back in 2018, signing for a $500K bonus that was more commensurate with fourth-round money at the time. His ascent to the majors has been slowed by injuries, most notably a Tommy John procedure that limited him to 6 2/3 innings in 2023 and 54 2/3 innings in 2024.

Burrows’ 2024 workload included a brief MLB debut — 3 1/3 innings of long relief against the Yankees in late September. He allowed one earned runs on two hits and three walks with two strikeouts in that game and wound up being credited with a win in his first MLB appearance.

This year, Burrows has been outstanding. He’s pitched 32 1/3 innings over seven starts — the Pirates have surely been limiting his innings a bit in his first full season back from UCL surgery — and pitched to a sterling 2.51 ERA. He’s averaging 94.7 mph on his heater, fanning 31.5% of his opponents, limiting walks at a solid 8.5% clip and sporting a terrific 14.4% swinging-strike rate. Burrows has paired that heater with a slider that sits 85.4 mph, a changeup in that same velocity range, and an upper-70s curveball. He’s also allowed only two runs over his past 17 2/3 frames while turning in a stellar 28-to-4 K/BB ratio.

The Pirates didn’t push Burrows past 75 pitches in a start until mid-May. He didn’t complete five innings until his sixth start of the season but has now done so twice in his past three outings. (The other was an 86-pitch effort wherein he lasted only 4 2/3 frames but punched out 11 batters.) Burrows’ two most recent starts have seen his pitch count climb to 86 and 87, respectively.

Entering the 2025 campaign, Baseball America ranked Burrows 13th among Pirates prospects, noting that improvements in his secondary pitches have restored some of his fallen stock and put him back in the conversation for a rotation role in the majors. He ranked 15th among Pirates farmhands at both FanGraphs and at MLB.com. His slight frame and injury history prompt plenty of speculation about an eventual move to the bullpen — perhaps in a multi-inning role — but he’s earned a chance to show he can stick in a rotation role.

Pirates starters rank 11th in MLB with a combined 3.71 ERA, thanks largely to brilliant work from ace Paul Skenes and an excellent 3.02 ERA from offseason signee Andrew Heaney. Mitch Keller has been solid (3.88 ERA), and fourth starter Bailey Falter has gone from looking like his hold on a rotation spot was fading to one of the league’s hottest pitchers; he’s allowed just one run in past 23 2/3 innings — albeit with a shaky 17-to-9 K/BB ratio in that time (19.5 K%, 10.3 BB%).

At some point, the Bucs will turn to the ballyhooed Chandler for a look, though perhaps not until they’re certain he won’t earn a full year of major league service time in 2025 (as Skenes did in 2024 when he won Rookie of the Year honors despite a relatively late May 6 call to the big leagues). The 6’3″, 218-pound Chandler has pitched to a 2.17 ERA with a huge 36.8% strikeout rate, a 10.5% walk rate, a 14.7% swinging-strike rate and a heater that’s averaged 98 mph.