{"id":74615,"date":"2025-08-16T18:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T18:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/74615\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T18:00:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T18:00:06","slug":"pirates-to-move-andrew-heaney-to-bullpen-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/74615\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates To Move Andrew Heaney To Bullpen Role"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Heaney<\/a> has made 23 starts for the Pirates this season, but manager Don Kelly<\/a> told reporters (including Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette<\/a>) today that Heaney will be utilized out of the bullpen for the remainder of the season.\u00a0 The news creates an immediate vacancy in the Bucs\u2019 rotation, as Heaney was slated to start Sunday\u2019s game against the Cubs.<\/p>\n

Just to quell any immediate speculation, Hiles reports<\/a> in a follow-up message that star prospect Bubba Chandler<\/a> won\u2019t be called up to take Heaney\u2019s spot.\u00a0 Chandler is scheduled to start for Triple-A Indianapolis today, and fellow prospect Hunter Barco<\/a> just pitched on Wednesday, so he doesn\u2019t have enough rest to be ready for another start tomorrow.\u00a0 Turning to Triple-A pitchers already on the 40-man roster, Johan Oviedo<\/a> just pitched yesterday, and Tom Harrington<\/a> is on Indianapolis\u2019 injured list.\u00a0 It is possible the Pirates could just use a bullpen game tomorrow, with Carmen Mlodzinski<\/a> the likeliest candidate to soak up the majority of innings.<\/p>\n

However Pittsburgh decides to ultimately fill the rotation spot, it is noteworthy in its own right that Heaney is headed to the pen.\u00a0 Heaney has posted a 4.99 ERA over 119 innings, with lackluster advanced metrics<\/a> pretty much across the board except for a decent 7.4% walk rate.\u00a0 The long ball has once again been a problem for Heaney, as only four pitchers in all of baseball have allowed more homers than the left-hander\u2019s 24 big flies.\u00a0 After being a very adept strikeout pitcher earlier in his career, Heaney\u2019s strikeout rates were middling in 2023-24 and have now plummeted to just 16.1% this year.<\/p>\n

The Bucs inked Heaney to a one-year, $5.25MM free agent deal<\/a> last winter, and the thinking behind the signing was that the southpaw would be a veteran bridge for the rotation until some of the younger minor league arms were ready for prime time in the latter half of the season.\u00a0 This tactic assumed that Heaney would\u2019ve been dealt at the trade deadline, though the Yankees were the only team publicly linked<\/a> to Heaney\u2019s market, and ultimately the southpaw stayed put since Pittsburgh apparently couldn\u2019t find an acceptable offer.<\/p>\n

The move to the pen will have an impact on Heaney\u2019s wallet, as his contract contains up to $750K in incentive bonuses related to his innings totals.\u00a0 He\u2019ll receive an extra $50K for pitching at least 120 innings, a $100K bonus for hitting 130 innings, plus an extra $150K for the 140, 150, 160, and 170-inning thresholds.\u00a0 The 120-inning bonus is a lock and 130 innings seems plausible, though the higher bonuses will be harder to achieve with a more limited relief workload.<\/p>\n

Between Heaney\u2019s lack of production and the fact that the Bucs never saw him as a long-term option, there are plenty of legitimate baseball reasons behind the southpaw\u2019s removal from the rotation.\u00a0 However, given the Pirates\u2019 notoriously tight budget, the financial element to Heaney\u2019s role change can\u2019t be ignored.\u00a0 It was just last season that Rowdy Tellez<\/a> was released<\/a> in late September when he was just four plate appearances shy of unlocking a $200K bonus from his Pirates contract.<\/p>\n

Heaney has mostly worked as a starter during his 12 MLB seasons, but he has made his share of bullpen appearances and worked as a swingman.\u00a0 Posting some good numbers as a reliever might help him finish 2025 on a high note, and perhaps give him another way of promoting himself in free agency.\u00a0 It seems likely that Heaney would prefer a starting job if he can find it, but working as an innings-eating reliever or as a swingman could help open up his market to teams wary about his recent results as a starter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrew Heaney has made 23 starts for the Pirates this season, but manager Don Kelly told reporters (including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[28424,49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-74615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-andrew-heaney","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}