The easy part is to watch something. It's to point to a toy on a shelf and remember to make a note of it for Santa.

The harder part is what you've got to give up to get it. Good morning to you. Good. Thursday morning. I'm Dan Kovach of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Pirates.

Presented by the North Shore Tavern, home of steak on a stone. Comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you're into football and or hockey, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and penguins in the same place that you found this.

Pirates will resume their 2026 season tomorrow night in Cleveland with a three-game series against the Guardians.

That'll be a 7.10 p.m. first pitch.

The rotation for the weekend, as the team made known yesterday, will be Jared Jones,

Braxton Ashcraft, Paul Skeens, basically a replica of what was just witnessed in that wonderful sweep over the Brewers this past weekend.

But no matter how that turned out, no matter how this weekend will turn out, no matter how life in the Bronx will turn out next week,

the anvil that's hanging from a thread over this franchise's head right now is in the bullpen.

It won't be any one or two games or one or two series that alters that.

My view on this is simple.

It's a rare opportunity for the pirates to be in contention.

It's a really rare opportunity for the pirates to be number one in all of Major League Baseball

in offense. And graphed onto that that it's a really rare opportunity to have the caliber

of the starting pitching

that the team does. Hasn't all gone smoothly, but I don't think anybody would dispute the

pedigree of what's there. So what's missing? The bullpen, like all of it. And by that,

I actually mean that, because if you go to the very back end, you go to the

closer spot. Gregory Soto's not that. He has some really good overall numbers that mask this.

The 1.08 whip is nice. The 182 opponent's batting average is really nice.

Four blown saves in 16 opportunities, not nice.

And the closer is the one role in the entire sport that can be condensed to a single statistic.

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