Cherington Hints Roansy Contreras Could Be Back With Pirates Soon

The Pittsburgh Pirates pitching staff has seen some changes throughout the 2022 season.

Jose Quintana is gone. Mitch Keller is starting to come around. Zach Thompson is regressing, Tyler Beede is starting games now.

And Roansy Contreras? He is at Triple-A Indianapolis building his pitch count back up after being given a break to monitor his workload.

To be totally fair, Contreras probably needed a break due to his previous forearm injury in 2021 and the fact he hasn’t pitched more than 72 innings in a season since 2019 when he was with the Yankees’ High-A club in Charleston.

There is also another side to this debate as far with service manipulation and Contreras’ super two status, which coincidently has either just passed or is about to pass.

This leaves no shock when Pirates general manager Ben Cherington discussed Contreras in a different light Sunday afternoon. On Cherington’s weekly radio show on 93.7 The Fan, Contreras’ status was brought up.

“(Contreras) has pretty much checked all the boxes at this point,” said Cherington. “A big part of sending him down was to incorporate some recovery time for Contreras in the middle of his first full major league season.”

To no one’s shock, Cherington gave an answer that was expected. There was probably some truth in that, but there were so many other options to limit innings and use for Contreras. You could’ve easily allowed Contreras to start games and do the same thing the Pirates are doing with Beede, which is to use him just a few innings at a tine.

Were there other reasons for sending Contreras down to Triple-A?

“There were some development challenges that Contreras wanted to tackle during his time in Indy,” said Cherington. “Contreras has been working hard at those challenges and he’s now got his pitch count up and has gone five innings. I think Contreras has checked most of those boxes and he should be close to finishing the season in Pittsburgh.”

Cherington never mentioned what those “challenges” Contreras wanted to tackle were. I’m not saying Contreras didn’t want some things to achieve. Yet from a front office that said it would be more transparent than the previous regime, it has been anything but.