The Pirates have placed left-hander Martín Pérez on the 15-day injured list due to a left groin strain and placed catcher Joey Bart on the 10-day injured list with an left thumb injury, per a team announcement. (Further details on Bart’s injury aren’t yet available.)
In a pair of corresponding moves, Pittsburgh reinstated third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes from the injured list and selected the contract of catcher Grant Koch, who’ll make his big league debut when he first gets into a game.
Pérez exited his Sunday start after three innings. The 33-year-old appeared to tweak something while covering first base on a third-inning grounder. While he finished out the frame, he was replaced in the fourth inning.
Bart also departed Sunday’s contest early, but the severity of his injury — or even a formal diagnosis — has not yet been provided by the team.
Pittsburgh signed Pérez to a one-year, $8M contract in the offseason, hoping he could provide some veteran stability at the back of a rotation they were expecting to rely heavily on Mitch Keller, Jared Jones and Paul Skenes. Through his first 11 starts, he’s more or less been that.
Pérez has pitched to a pedestrian 4.71 ERA with an 18% strikeout rate and 7.5% walk rate in 57 1/3 innings. That number is still skewed to an extent by one nightmare outing that saw Pérez shellacked for nine runs at the hands of the Brewers. His combined ERA in 10 other starts sits at a far more palatable 3.61 mark.
While the veteran is on the shelf, the Bucs will still have that trio of Skenes, Jones and Keller to anchor the rotation, with Bailey Falter alongside them as well. They will likely need to find a fifth starter at some point, but they should have some time to figure that out.
They were off yesterday and will be off again on Thursday and Monday. That means they could theoretically keep those four guys on regular rest through the first week of June without need of another starter.
Whether they wait until then or decide to bring up another arm sooner, they have some options. Quinn Priester and Daulton Jefferies are each on the 40-man roster and currently on optional assignment. They also have some non-roster guys with major league experience, including Domingo Germán and Wily Peralta.
Behind the plate, Bart’s injury gives the Bucs three catchers on the IL, as Jason Delay and Endy Rodríguez were already on the shelf. Rodríguez is out for the year due to UCL surgery while Delay underwent knee surgery earlier this year. Delay recently started a rehab assignment but has only played two games as part of that so far.
The Bucs have Yasmani Grandal on the roster and could have perhaps recalled Henry Davis to join him. Davis was optioned after hitting just .162/.280/.206 in the big leagues but has slashed .297/.444/.672 at Triple-A since being sent down.
That latter line has come in a small sample of just 18 games, and perhaps the club wants him to keep getting regular playing time away from the bright lights of the show. It’s also possible that Delay will be ready shortly and they didn’t want to promote Davis just for a few days.
Another explanation is just that Koch happened to be available, as Kevin Gorman of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review relays on X that Koch was on the taxi squad.
Whatever the logic, the result is that Koch will get to the big leagues for the first time. The 27-year-old was drafted back in 2018 and has been climbing the minor league ladder since then.
He has never really been on the radar of prospect evaluators and has hit just .203/.284/.322 in his minor league career. That includes a line of .167/.211/.259 in Triple-A this year while striking out in 42.4% of his plate appearances.
Despite the lackluster offense, Koch was the primary backstop of Skenes when the two were both at Triple-A, as relayed by Alex Stumpf of MLB.com on X. Stumpf then theorized that the two could perhaps work together during Skenes’ next start.
Whatever the plan is, Koch will be making his major league debut as soon as skipper Derek Shelton sends him onto the field.