Is Carmen Mlodzinski Actually the Pirates’ Best 5th Starter Option?

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Happy Friday, everyone.

This is Offbeat.

Daily look at the Pittsburgh Pirates brought to you by North Shore 9, presented by Fandall.

My name is Alex Stumpf.

And I would like to talk about the Pirates starting rotation, you know, not the reigning

Sai Young winner, not the pitcher who has the most wins in PNC Park's history, not the

pitcher who is a rookie of the year contender this year.

No, I would like to talk about someone who is competing for the fifth starter job that

I think a lot of people would prefer he stay in the bullpen.

And that's Carmen Maginski.

To properly tell this, I think we have to go back in time a little bit, some, a little

preamble here.

Carmen Maginski is drafted as a starting pitcher, spent most of his time in the minors as a

starting pitcher, got called up in 2023 as a reliever and did really well, really solid

showing, look like someone who could contribute either as a multi inning arm or someone who

has the potential to slot into a back end of a bullpen.

Same thing happens in 2024, use more in the middle relief role, but someone's like, yeah,

he could be a set up man one day, 2025, Jared Jones gets hurt during spring training.

And Carmen Maginski was stretching out anyway to potentially start.

He ends up winning the fifth starter job and it doesn't go well.

It was a rough situation for him to come in whenever he did, you know, not a ton of experience

in this type of role in the upper levels, not a lot of experience going through a lineup

a couple times in the upper levels and it really showed in the majors.

He would be really solid for an inning or two or one trip through the lineup in particular

and then the second time through the wheels would come off.

I want to look at left handed hitters, how they performed against the righty here.

Last year, whenever he was a starting pitcher, Carmen Maginski, first time through the lineup,

first hit 220, 264 OBP 320 slugging percentage, that's pretty good at the end of the day.

Now everyone does their worst as a hitter, the first time through the lineup, like pitchers

usually do better the first time through than the second time they tire, hitters get to

see everything they have.

It usually gets worse the second and third time through the order.

Maginski, it got pretty horrible the second time through the order.

Hitters hit 220 the first time through the order, left handers the second time through

the order 318 slugging percentage for a left handers first time through the order 320,

second time 614.

This is why Carmen Maginski didn't stick as a starting pitcher and why they pulled the

plug on this in mid-May.

He just couldn't get hitters out the second time through and that's really what differentiates

someone from a relief pitcher and a starting pitcher.

I will admit, whenever it happened, watching it live, it's like, well, he's a reliever

and there's nothing wrong with being a solid major league reliever, which is what I thought

his trajectory would be.

Goes down to the minor leagues, comes back up, pitches really well out of the bullpen again

and it's like, well, okay, that just further establishes this guy is a relief pitcher,

not a starting pitcher.

It wasn't the same Carmen Maginski that we saw though, like whenever he went down to the

minors, he said he really wanted to re-evaluate what pitches he was using, what he could do differently,

and his takeaway was the splitter.

This is a very intriguing pitch for me.

For a multitude of reasons, the big one being what we saw last year with the splitter.

Whenever he was a starting pitcher facing left-handed hitters, he used the splitter about

as often as his sweeper and his slider.

Now the slider was a really good pitch whenever he was in the early stages of the minors,

and he was also pitching an off of a sinker.

Maginski uses a four seamer, a whole lot more in the major leagues.

Those pitches don't tunnel.

That pitch was kind of going naked and it was going up against left-handers and the sweeper

and the slider without something to tunnel off of.

That's just a breaking ball that is breaking in towards left-handed hitters.

The results speak for themselves.

A 6-14 sluggish percentage, second time through the order, I need to keep hammering that

point home.

I don't think it's a necessarily bad pitch, I don't think either one was a necessarily

bad pitch, but without anything to tunnel, it just wasn't going to work, in my opinion.

I think the data kind of backs that up.

Maginski goes down to the minors, he comes back up to the majors, and second half of the

season, he doesn't throw sliders or sweepers to left-handers.

His mix now is four seamer, splitter, curveball.

He is working north to south.

He is not trying to get beat inside against left-handed hitters.

Left-handed hitters, the second half of the season, facing that new pitch mix, 164 batting

average, 233 OBP, 179 sluggish percentage.

Now, I get that comes with an asterisk.

He was used exclusively as a reliever during that.

So if you want to say, well, yeah, you're just further submitting, this guy should be a

reliever, not a starter, okay, that can be a takeaway here.

I take it the other way, that he used this new pitch mix, and his sluggish percentage

against left-handers, first time through the order as a reliever, second half of the season,

179.

He was a starter, 320.

He did significantly better with this new pitch mix than he did even in his best case scenario

whenever he was starting here.

This is an intriguing pitch.

It is going to dive south.

It is going to make him work as a north-south pitcher against left-handers, which is what

I think he needs to do.

I think that's the only way he can be really effective.

He could work side-to-side and use the east-to-west against right-handers, have a pitch that runs

away from him, have two, like that's fine.

Have those waist pitches, have pitches that you can throw in, you know, the outer part

of his own to right-handers, but if you can avoid those with the left-handers and just

attack in a way that doesn't make him comfortable, I think that makes him a much more intriguing

starting pitch in Canada.

Then I went down to Braden to Nurtler this month, and he didn't have a great

start.

He did not have a great start whenever I saw him there, but he put it together as the

yawning went on, and he really leaned on the splitter.

He talked afterwards about how he noticed he didn't really have the fastball, so the

splitter became his go-to pitch, and it worked, and he was throwing it to both right-handers

and left-handers.

He was getting good results against both better-handness.

It was that I could look at the metrics, I could look at the data from last year, but

it's the feel for me, that whenever he was presented with a tough opportunity, even

at a spring training game, I know it doesn't count, but you know, I think it's telling

that it's like, I don't have my stuff today, what am I going to go to?

He felt confident that he could go to the splitter, and that the splitter unit good results.

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This is something that I think really needs to be considered whenever we're looking at

this fifth starter competition that we got in camp right now.

There's cleverger, there's ureckity, there's abarco, there's other options.

Like Majewski isn't here as solely the only option to be the starting pitcher, and that's

fine.

He shouldn't be.

There's also the theoretical chance the Pirates could sign someone.

I mean, it's still not outrageously deep in the camp.

Okay, it's pretty deep in the camp, but there's still some time that if they wanted to bring

someone in and build them up, it's not out of the realm of possibility.

I'm growing pretty doubtful of that at this point, but they don't have a left-handed

starter in this rotation.

You don't need one, in my opinion, even if you have one, there are going to be plenty

of series where you're just going to throw three right-handers, that's fine.

But I think you always need that pitcher who could handle left-handers.

And that's why the South Paw was such a staple in this rotation for years.

The veteran South Paw, the Tyler Anderson, the Jose Contana, the Rich Hills, the Marco

Gonzaleses, the Andrew Heaney's, those type of guys were always in an opening day rotation.

Really don't have one right now.

Maybe Hunter Barco wins the fifth starter job or gets caught up at some point and becomes

that guy.

I think he has that potential, but they don't have that guy right now.

I would like someone who can handle left-handers, and I'm not counting like Paul Schienz, who

just handles everyone.

I think Mijinsky's splitter makes him someone who can handle left-handers.

Someone who, last year, the starting pitching experiment failed because he couldn't handle

left-handers, could kind of be like a semi-left-handed specialist because of this splitter.

And how he uses it and how he is going to attack hitters north to south.

We have to see him do it two, three times through or line up.

That's fine.

We're not going to really know that until the actual results.

And if he ends up going to the bullpen, what I'm saying I think could really apply still

well.

Like, I think he could still be a very solid major league reliever in all of this.

But if you have a chance to have a quality starter, that's worth more than a quality reliever.

Like last year, if he would have been just a starting pitcher, he probably would have thrown

like 50-60 really good innings, that first time through the line up, and then 100 mediocre

ones, the second to third, mediocre to bad, maybe even sub placement level.

And that point, it's like, well, what are you doing here?

You're just having 100 mediocre ridnings out here.

Just having a reliever and having those 60 good innings.

I get that argument.

I don't think this time it's the same though.

I don't know if he was put exactly in a good position last year to start.

I feel like there was a little bit of a doom to fail, trade with this, because of the

pitch mix, because of the lack of experience, because of the fact that he didn't really

get a lot of leash in a lot of starts.

A lot of starts, he was pulled after 18 batters.

His last start in the Derek Shelton era, Shelton pulled him after four and two thirds innings

because he was about to face the line up the third time through.

Now from a pure analytical standpoint, yeah, that might have been the right call.

Maybe from a machismo, from a do right for the player standpoint, no, you let him try

to get that out and you let him try to qualify for a win.

I feel like there was a little bit of a doom to fail, trade with everything that he was

doing as a starting pitcher last year.

I don't see that this year.

I see this as a more competitive ball club.

I see this as a young pitcher who learned from those mistakes last year, applied himself

in AAA, worked hard, got another opportunity in the majors, maybe not in the role that

he wanted.

I mean, everyone knows he wants to be a starting pitcher.

I don't blame him at all for that.

I don't fault him at all for that.

You should want to be the best version of yourself, but the opportunity was in the bullpen.

He was happier to be in the majors, he pitched well on that.

I think carbon maginsky could be a really solid, major league starter, and I don't know

if I would have believed myself, if I would have said that in May of 2025.

I think the failures that he endured, he took good lessons from it, and he's got a really

good pitch here that he's utilizing in a brand new way.

I would like to see how this turns out over a course of a full season.

I really like what I've seen from a lot of the guys competing for the fifth starter

job, but if it was me, I think I would start the year with him in the rotation and see

where he can take you.

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This is Offbeat, presented by North Shore 9, presented by Fandall.

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