There aren't answers. Not on the mound. Certainly not off it.

David Bednar's followed up a 2024 in which he'd been flogged every other time out ... with a 2025 that's seen much the same through spring training and now this season opener, the Pirates' 5-4 loss to the Marlins tonight here at loanDepot Park.

He took a tie into the ninth inning, and he emerged with two hits that were absolutely scorched:

That was Nick Fortes getting all of a rising 97.4-mph four-seamer over the outer corner, then over the head of a late-retreating Oneil Cruz, for a leadoff triple. The count was 2-2, Joey Bart had his mitt set high but right down the middle, and the miss to the outside was met with Fortes' full extension and, of course, his barrel.

Bad pitch? Or bad luck?

After an intentional walk, Kyle Stowers ended it with a vapor trail of his own:

Virtually identical location, only this time it was where Bart wanted it. This was an 0-2 count, Bednar having blown two other high-ish heaters by him, and Stowers tomahawked away at the third of those up in his eyeballs.

"Simple as it sounds, the first couple of pitches, I was just trying to take care of the runner at third, like I was kind of guiding it a little bit," Stowers told South Florida reporters down the hall. "But it gets to 0-2, and I kinda had a feeling he was gonna go back to the fastball after I swung and missed at the first two, so I just let it go a little bit. I wasn't just trying to baby it."

Bad pitch? Or bad sequencing?

I asked Bednar afterward if the last pitch was where he wanted, and he mutedly nodded.

I also asked, you know, how he's doing. This has been going on for a while. And even if it's an unfortunate result -- I'm not definitively suggesting it is -- it's got to be gutting.

“No," he flatly replied to that. "It just didn't go my way today.”

But wouldn't it have been wonderful if it had, given what he's gone through?

“It’s a long season, I’m not gonna overreact to the first outing. I'm happy with where my stuff is right now, and it’s good to be right back out there tomorrow.”

OK, I guess. I won't take it too far, either.

But it's beyond telling, I'd say that Derek Shelton declared both early and again late in spring training that he won't designate a closer, that he'll use some combination of Bednar, Colin Holderman and I-have-no-idea-what-name-to-type-here to fill that out.

I asked Shelton after this how wide open, in his eyes, that back end might be.

"It's one game in," he replied. "We have guys who have to perform. I have faith that our guys will get it done."

OK, I guess.

This much is certain: There's no Aroldis Chapman parachute this time around. And that'll have an impact, I'd imagine, for months to come. Because the most unmistakably ominous feeling in this game, from the Pittsburgh perspective, came not in the ninth inning but in the eighth, when Holderman was up to seven batters and 37 pitchers with Shelton having, legitimately, nowhere to turn other than bringing Bednar aboard an inning early.

From there, who'd handle the ninth?

Answer: No one.