Pittsburgh Pirates' Closer Matt Capps Out Eight Weeks: What Now?

Danny Moskos: Just kidding. By the way, Matt Wieters was recently promoted to AA.

John Grabow: Earlier in the year, Grabow would have easily been the frontrunner to fill in for Capps. But he has been terrible over the past month and has shown few signs of righting the ship. If he does return to form, Grabow may be pitching the ninth inning in August.

Romulo Sanchez: Sanchez, recently promoted from AAA, got the save in Tuesday night’s game after Capps initially blew the save in the 10th inning. While Sanchez has good stuff, it seems unlikely that manager John Russell will turn the ninth inning over to someone who has 19 career innings pitched. Plus, Sanchez’s save Tuesday wasn’t exactly clean, as he gave up a run on two hits and a walk.

Sean Burnett: John Russell has slowly grown more confident in Burnett, a former first-round draft pick who switched from being a starter to a reliever just this year. Burnett has pitched well of late, allowing only one run in his past seven outings—and that run came in a game in which he pitched three innings.

It seems a bit early for Burnett to be thrust into the closer’s role—the Pirates aren’t that desperate—but he could certainly see an increased role over the next two months.

The answer, then, is that there is no answer. Yates most resembles the prototypical hard-throwing, gutsy, take-on-all-comers pitcher you would want to take the hill in the ninth inning, but he simply doesn’t throw enough strikes.

What complicates the matter further is that the Pirates don’t really have an eighth-inning guy—it used to be Grabow before his prolonged slump—so there is no pecking order to follow.

The triumvirate of Yates, Marte, and Grabow has done a spectacular job of getting the game from the starter to Capps as a group throughout the year. Expect Russell to take a similar approach now that Capps is gone, using the three pitchers interchangeably in various important situations to get through the game’s final three innings.

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