Jared Jones completed his fifth rehab assignment for Triple-A Indianapolis on Sunday and is now eligible to be reinstated from the 60-day injured list, putting the Pittsburgh roster in a short, sharp decision cycle that could conclude as early as Thursday.
That availability collides with another roster question: Bubba Chandler started Wednesday’s 10-4 loss to the Chicago Cubs, lasting five innings and allowing four runs on eight hits with two walks and five strikeouts. Chandler threw 91 pitches — 32 of them in the first inning — and 60 pitches for strikes. The juxtaposition of Jones’s return and Chandler’s uneven recent work leaves the club weighing whether to keep Chandler in the rotation, shift him into a bulk relief role, or send him to Triple-A.
Chandler’s week has been a study in volatility. On Friday night in Toronto he struck out a career-high 11 batters and was not charged with an earned run in five innings. Sixty hours later, he endured a night in Chicago that raised questions: his season ERA sat at 4.85 after the latest start, and the club now faces concrete choices that will change the makeup of the pitching staff.
Manager Don Kelly signaled the gravity of the moment without telegraphing a decision. "We’ve got a lot of tough decisions to make here coming up," he said, and added that the staff would "sit down and beat it up a little bit more to come to a final answer, but we’re taking everything into account, including tonight." Kelly praised Chandler’s upside — "There’s electricity in there. There’s a young kid that’s navigating the big leagues trying to figure it out" — and acknowledged the developmental trade-offs: "There’s been some really, really good times and some electric stuff, and there’s been some learning moments that we’re always gonna deal with with young players."
Chandler himself described the work as a technical puzzle. "There’s just so many things, little things that go into each pitch, delivery and all that stuff and sometimes it’s tough to sync up and you know what’s going on and the stuff that fits," he said, later adding, "I think I fixed it after the first and they got some ugly hits in there. It’s a good team."
Those comments frame the tension facing the front office. Jones’s timeline is concrete: he had right elbow surgery last May, has completed the fifth rehab assignment, and is eligible for activation. The club has publicly contemplated changing Jones’s role when he returns, a flexibility that increases the number of viable roster permutations. For Chandler, the fault line is consistency versus upside — he can flash dominance, as he did in Toronto, but he can also be hittable, as the Cub lineup showed.
The tangible options are narrow and consequential. One path is to move Chandler to Triple-A to let him work on mechanics and rebuild rhythm away from MLB pressure. Another is to preserve his ability to throw multiple innings by shifting him into a bulk role out of the bullpen, keeping his electric stuff available in higher-leverage relief bursts while limiting exposure to lineup-by-line failures. Both options were explicitly mentioned by the club as real possibilities.
Kelly also flagged the personal side of the choice: "He’s so hard on himself," the manager said, pointing to a mental component that could influence whether the team elects a developmental reset or an in-house adjustment. "Finding a way to slow that down and allow the talent he has to play in the strike zone." That balance between protecting a young arm and maximizing immediate Major League help is precisely why the decision matters today.
Given Jones’s cleared rehab and immediate eligibility, and given Chandler’s alternating highs and lows in back-to-back starts, the most likely outcome is a reconfiguration that keeps Chandler’s raw stuff available but reduces his exposure as a weekend starter — a bullpen bulk role would preserve his strikeout ability while opening a roster spot for Jones. The Pirates could announce that move as early as Thursday, but whatever they choose will be a clear signal about how the club values development versus present-day rotation depth.
