Troubling Trends For Pirates Closer David Bednar

After a poor start to the season, it looked like Pittsburgh Pirates closer David Bednar regained the form the made him in All-Star in each of the past two seasons.

Through his first 13 appearances of the season, Bednar carried an ultra-inflated 11.45 ERA and had blown three save chances, already matching his total from all of 2023.

But after rebounding to a 1.85 ERA over his next 25 appearances and converting 19-straight save opportunities, Bednar put any doubts to bed.

It appeared as though Bednar’s early-season troubles could be attributed to an abbreviated spring training. Bednar made only two appearances during Grapefruit League play due to a lat injury. He then landed on the injured list with a lat issue during the back-half of June and missed nearly a month.

Maybe his late is still a bother. Maybe it’s not. But Bednar’s recent performance and overall trends this season are discouraging.

Bednar was on the mound in the final two innings in the series finale against the Dodgers on Sunday afternoon. After a nine-pitch scoreless ninth inning, manager Derek Shelton opted to send Bednar back out for the 10th inning with the Pirates’ leading by a run.

Enrique Hernández led off the 10th with a game-tying double against Bednar. Four batters later, he scored the winning run on a Teoscar Hernández walk-off single to right field.

After seeing his ERA shrink to 4.84 on July 28 in Arizona, Bednar has been scored upon at least once in each of his last five outings. In those five games, the right-hander taken the loss twice, blown two saves and uncharacteristically struggled with command as evident by seven walks in 5.1 innings.

Bednar is averaging more walks per nine innings than he has in any year of his career outside of a 13-game showing during his rookie season with the San Diego Padres in 2019. He’s already yielded seven home runs this season, which is the same amount he allowed from 2022-23 combined.

His bread and butter, a four-seam fastball, has lost its effectiveness despite a slight uptick in velocity from last season. Bednar’s fastball ranked in the 88th-percentile in run value in 2023 but ranks in the 18th-percentile this season.

His splitter took a relatively small dip in value from 2022-23 but has had a drastic downturn this year and is now in the 36th-percentile of run value.

Bednar’s curveball has been by far his most effective pitch but he’s throwing it less than ever before during his Pirates’ career. He throws the curve 19% of the time, with 21% of his pitches being the split-finger and the rest his four-seamer.

Looking further down at the ever-handy Baseball Savant page for Bednar, there is much more blue (not good) in his percentile rankings than red (good). Bednar’s strikeout rate has dropped considerably and when opponents are putting the ball in play, they are getting the barrel of the bat on the ball more than twice as often as they did last season.

The trends he’s shown this season don’t necessarily paint an optimistic picture, but given his pedigree, Bednar deserves the chance to search for answers and put another difficult stretch behind him. But given the point of the season and the current Pirates’ freefall, those solutions better come quick.