Luis L. Ortiz throws six scoreless innings against Guardians

CLEVELAND – Coming out of Spring Training, the Pirates made a surprising decision to have Luis L. Ortiz break camp with the team, but as a reliever. He had started his entire professional career, but they had a full rotation in place and wanted to challenge him and see how he would respond.

“The challenge to him was just go out and pitch and don’t worry about what time or what spot in the game it is,” manager Derek Shelton said. “If you do that, then good things are going to happen, and I think we’re seeing that.”

Oh, have they been seeing that of late. After a quality turn in the bullpen to start the year, Ortiz worked himself back into regular rotation work, first with an opener ahead of him and then as a regular starter. The results speak for themselves, with Ortiz posting a 3.19 ERA on the season, thanks in part to his last few outings.

Ortiz tossed six scoreless innings Saturday at Progressive Field, extending his current streak to 15 consecutive frames posting a zero. That stellar pitching performance was enough for the Pirates to snap their four-game skid, beating the Guardians, 3-0.

“I felt good,” Ortiz said, via interpreter and coach Stephen Morales. “I put in a lot of hard work this week, getting myself ready for this game. I watched a lot of video and watched the game yesterday, which told me a lot. That’s what put me in a good spot today.”

The whole arsenal was clicking Saturday, leaning on his slider for four of his five strikeouts while changing eye levels with his three fastballs – the four-seamer, sinker and cutter – to keep the Guardians off balance. While he would walk three, he only surrendered one hit and got Brayan Rocchio to ground out the only time the Guardians had two men on base against him all night.

“He had those three fastballs working in all directions, and his slider was really good,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “We couldn’t get anything going against him. When he has three different fastballs like that it’s tough to tell which one it is until it’s too late.”

Behind Ortiz’s performance, Dennis Santana got five big outs in relief and Aroldis Chapman tossed a 1-2-3 ninth for the save, giving the bullpen a much-needed quality night after surrendering 36 runs the previous four games. Andrew McCutchen’s fourth-inning single brought home Nick Gonzales and extended his hitting streak to 13 games, tied for the second longest of his career. Rowdy Tellez added two insurance runs in the eighth with a two-out bases-loaded pinch-hit single.

But when a team is in a skid like the Pirates were, it’s usually the starting pitcher who has to shove to end the streak. Ortiz did that, and his growth over the course of the season is undeniable.

“It’s hard work, and it’s the staff,” Ortiz said about what he hopes he’s shown this year. “They’re always on top of me, trying to make me better. I’ve been taking advantage of that too, the help from the staff.”

While there is still another month of ball to be played and Ortiz should toe the rubber a couple more times, it’s hard to not look ahead to how he fits into this staff moving forward. There’s plenty of young, controllable pitching on this team, and even more on the way with prospects Bubba Chandler, Thomas Harrington, Braxton Ashcraft, and the return of Johan Oviedo from Tommy John surgery.

Shelton isn’t taking part in any 2025 speculation about where Ortiz lands, but he did offer a vote of confidence for his young right-hander and where he stands.

“I think he’s established that he is a starter,” Shelton said. “He came to the big leagues as a starter, and coming out of Spring Training, we didn’t have a spot for him, and then he worked his way back by opening for him, changing the repertoire a little bit. But I think we view him as a starter.”