The Pittsburgh Pirates are turning Thursday’s series finale into a bullpen game, with Lake Bachar scheduled to open against the San Francisco Giants. The move comes with the Pirates 5.5 games out of the final wild card spot, a narrow enough gap to make even a pitching switch part of the postseason picture.
It is not the kind of decision teams make when the calendar has gone soft. The Pirates and Giants split the first two games of the series, and the finale was set to land in the middle of a tight late-season stretch for Pittsburgh in the NL playoff race. The Giants were also carrying their own baggage, sitting 24 games under.500 after those first two games, while the matchup still had enough weight to matter in Pittsburgh’s chase.
Lake Bachar is the face of that plan. He has a 3.70 ERA, ranked in the 74th percentile in expected ERA and in the 91st percentile in expected batting average against, and he had not walked a batter in back-to-back outings. He had allowed 30 free passes all season, a useful detail on a day when the Giants were dead last in MLB in walk rate.
There is, though, a limit to how far the Pirates can lean on him. Bachar had not pitched more than three innings in any of his outings as an opener this season, and the odds market set his outs recorded prop at 5.5 on Thursday, a sign that his job is expected to be brief. That leaves the rest of the game to a bullpen that has carried a 4.11 ERA in the 2026 season, and it is that part of the plan that decides whether the choice looks sharp or merely necessary.
Blade Tidwell was set to start for the Giants, making his sixth start of the season and 14th appearance. He carried a 4.54 ERA, a 5.26 ERA since joining the rotation in August, and had allowed six or more runs in two of his last three outings. That gives Pittsburgh a reason to ask for a short game early and trust its relief corps to handle the rest, even with the club still in striking distance of the final wild card spot.
So the question is not whether Bachar will start. It is how long the Pirates want him to stay on the mound before the bullpen game becomes the real game, and whether a team still trying to stay alive can afford the kind of middle-inning volatility that usually comes with it.
