What was supposed to be a strength ended up being the team’s major weakness. David Bednar and Colin Holderman are two main reasons.
Well, one could have felt the start of the 2024 Pittsburgh Pirates’ downfall coming for a while now. The Pirates have been on a pattern of mediocrity since May, failing to reach the potential their outstanding starting rotation provides but doing just enough to linger in the National League Wild Card race.
With the offense not improving internally for the most part and neither the front office nor the team’s manager showing enough urgency, it was only a matter of time before the floodgates began to open on a typical Pittsburgh Pirates second half of the season collapse.
But how did the dam break so suddenly? Going into a crucial six-game homestand against two teams they were chasing in the National League Wild Card Race, the Pirates had all the momentum with the front office “buying” at the trade deadline and getting a critical series win in Houston against the vaunted Astros.
Everyone loves to hate Andy Haines and the Pirates’ offense, and usually, the hate is justified. But they are not the main reason for this recent fatal homestand, as they averaged five runs per game during that span. On a broader scale, the offense isn’t even the most disappointing aspect of this team. Few people expected that unit to be in the top 10 and maybe not even the top 15 in baseball, given how little the organization invested in it during the offseason.
History tells us the best bullpens make it to and far in October. Especially in the case of small-market teams like the Pirates, you end up however your bullpen performs. Overall, saying that the Pirates’ bullpen has fallen short of expectations is an understatement, and it has pretty much destroyed any playoff aspirations this team had in one short week.
Coming into the season, this bullpen was touted as the team’s strength. In March, Fangraphs rated Pittsburgh’s bullpen fourth in baseball, and MLB.com rated it third. However, it has been statistically the opposite, currently sitting in the bottom five of the league in categories such as ERA (earned run average), blown saves (28 saves in 52 opportunities), and losses (26).
It’s important to note that the season-ending injury of RHP Dauri Moreta during spring training and the absence of LHP Ryan Borucki for most of the season has devastated this bullpen’s overall state and depth more than most realize. But guys like RHPs Hunter Stratton and Kyle Nicolas have come up through the Pirates system and filled in nicely. This bullpen has imploded mainly because the supposed three-headed monster of LHP Aroldis Chapman and RHPs Colin Holderman and David Bednar has never gelled consistently.
Aroldis Chapman‘s signing with the Pirates was an unusual business decision for the organization. The Pirates made Chapman – a reliever in the twilight of his career who still shows flashes of greatness – the highest-paid player on the team for the 2024 season, giving him $10.5 million on a one-year deal. It was nice to see an aggressive signing like this from Ben Cherington, but for the Pirates, $10.5 million is a significant investment for a back-end reliever that they maybe could have done without. In hindsight, that money could have gone toward needs in the lineup and getting cheaper depth for the bullpen behind Holderman and Bednar.
As of today, though, Aroldis Chapman is their most reliable threat out of the pen. The Chapman experience was not fun for a while, as his walk rate and WHIP were out of control for the first few months of the season. But he has settled down nicely for the most part since June.
Investing in a reliable Chapman was only worth it if David Bednar and Colin Holderman continued to assert themselves as high-end relievers. But things have unexpectedly gone downhill fast for the two right-handers.
Holderman came out of the gates running in 2024 after recovering from a horrific flu during Spring Training, as he did not allow an earned run in 26 of his first 27 appearances. However, his decline has been evident for over a month, and he completely collapsed once Derek Shelton could no longer hide him behind the solid work of RHP Carmen Mldozinski in later innings.
While watching Holderman over the last month and a half – and even before he struggled – it seemed like he was shying away from his sinker and overusing his sweeper. This was hard to understand, given how his fastball can touch 99 or 100 with movement on any given outing.
The numbers prove that Holderman has wholly changed his pitch selection this season. According to Fangraphs, in 2023, the sinker was his primary pitch, as he threw it 50 percent of the time. This year, the sinker has only been thrown 27 percent of the time, while the sweeper has become the primary pitch at a rate of 47 percent.
While the success of both pitches remains about the same as last year, it’s easy to see that, of late, Holderman’s deadly sweeper (.189 opponent batting average) has become a liability. When you throw the same breaking pitch repeatedly in an at-bat and eventually leave one over the plate – as he did against Geraldo Perdomo last Friday and Joc Pederson last Sunday – Major League hitters will take advantage of it no matter how effective the pitch typically is.
Despite the different usage of his sweeper and sinker, the outlier in his pitch arsenal is the cutter. In 2023, Holderman threw the cutter 189 times, the same amount he has thrown it thus far in 2024. Opposing hitters are enjoying a .324 batting average against his cutter this year compared to a .231 clip in 2023.
Even though his overall numbers are similar to last year’s, Holderman needs to make some adjustments because it’s hard to recall him being this consistently bad for this amount of time.
Bednar’s bad season is more of a mystery, which is concerning. The simplest explanation is that hitters have adjusted to his four-seam fastball, which used to be an untouchable pitch. He has battled injury twice this season (once during Spring Training) and was starting to look like himself again before he went on his most recent IL stint. Bednar’s average velocity on his fastball and splitter has ticked slightly from last season, so it’s hard to conclude that injuries are the reason for his struggles.
There are still many flaws with this Pirates roster, but the front office and coaching staff should prioritize having a healthy, stable, and deep bullpen that will help this team contend in 2025. Because with a healthy back end of the bullpen closing out games effectively, the foundation of Paul Skenes, Jared Jones, and Mitch Keller will be useless.