Derek Shelton is not committed to David Bednar as the Pirates' closer for 2025. 

Shelton was asked this morning ahead of the Pirates' game against the Yankees at George M. Steinbrenner Field if Bednar was the closer, and responded: "I don't think right now we have that. I think right now we'll go and figure out what we're going to do from there."

Bednar put together a decent spring through four appearances where he pitched four innings, allowed one earned run and four hits while walking one and striking out five. But his past two appearances have been less than impressive: On March 13, he threw 26 pitches against the Twins in Fort Myers, Fla. while recording one out and giving up three hits, five earned runs and two walks.

"He did not throw the ball well at all," Shelton said. "The fastball was up, the breaking ball was inconsistent, I don’t know if that was coming off the off day, I’ll give him a little bit of a mulligan there."

After that appearance, Shelton said Bednar spoke with pitching coach Oscar Marin and he made adjustments ahead of his appearance yesterday at LECOM Park against the Orioles. He pitched 2/3 of an inning and allowed three hits, three runs, two earned and balked once. But, he also recorded one strikeout and was consistently in the zone. His fastball sat between 96 and 98 mph and his curveball and splitter were both sharp. One or two batters made solid contact, but the defense struggled.

Endy Rodriguez allowed a run to score on a passed ball, a pop fly dropped between Oneil Cruz, Jack Suwinksi and Adam Frazier in shallow right center and a few ground balls squeaked through the infield.

"Yesterday, the first five innings was not the cleanest game defensively for us, so my frustration level may have been a little high on that," Shelton said. "But I thought he threw the ball really well yesterday and was really happy with it. I think this is where we go in spring training, is sometimes you have to look at the process and not the results. Now the day down in Minnesota wasn’t a good day. He and Oscar had some conversations, I thought the bounce back yesterday, the stuff was good."

Heading into the 2025 season, Bednar is the most important piece of the bullpen. He struggled last season and blew a career-high seven saves while recording a 5.77 ERA. After back-to-back All-Star seasons and leading the league in saves in 2023, his return to form is important. After putting his full confidence in Bednar amidst his struggles a year ago, Shelton has not seen enough this spring to fully commit to Bednar as the closer.

• A few other notes from Shelton's availability:

• Thomas Harrington is still hanging around big-league camp while some of his minor-league teammates -- Bubba Chandler, Braxton Ashcraft and Mike Burrows -- have already been sent down to minor-league camp. As Anthony Murphy reported for us a few days ago, Harrington threw three innings at Pirate City earlier this week and he's set to start Tuesday. But Shelton has liked what he's seen so far.

• Henry Davis and Rodriguez have both had pretty strong springs. Davis is coming off a monster grand slam last night and Rodriguez is hitting .364 with a 1.108 OPS. I asked Shelton how difficult the two young catchers are making it on the staff to determine who will make the opening day roster, including if Jason Delay was included in that conversation. He said: "It's challenging. It's one that's going to go down to the end. Those guys are having good springs. They're producing. They've done everything we've asked them to do this winter and I think they're making it very difficult for us, which is a good thing."