P2Daily: Bullpen Still Biggest Area Of Opportunity For Pirates

The tale that is the 2022 Pittsburgh Pirates bullpen can probably be told in two halves – before David Bednar registered 50 pitches against the Los Angeles Dodgers, and how he did after before landing on the injured list.

Bednar’s struggles after that night and eventually IL stint exposed what we all expected – the bullpen was very much thin behind him. Some of the better stories of the season, Wil Crowe and Yerry De Los Santos, either fell to injuries or was ineffective in a higher leverage role.

That’s led to the Pirates having the third worst bullpen ERA, issuing the second walks and fifth highest opponent’s average. While they’ve pitched the fourth most innings, they have the 15th highest strikeout total as a unit.

Chase De Jong has been outstanding this year, and Yerry De Los Santos showed promise before going down with an injury. Wil Crowe even had success in certain roles out of the bullpen.

Crowe, however, has struggled when handed late inning situations with Bednar injured currently. He has a collective 5.50 ERA in the eighth and ninth innings combined, and a 1.60 mark the rest of the time.

While the rotation hasn’t been perfect, they’ve certainly kept the team in games that they probably had no business staying in, with the bullpen blowing things up.

It’ll be anyone’s guess how exactly the Pirates will approach the off-season, but really retooling the bullpen should be close to the top of the priority list. You can make a slight argument that there may be enough prospects knocking at the door next year that you won’t want to do anything to permanently block any of them on the offensive side of things.

They’ll still need to get some starters, potentially throughout free agency, but adding multiple proven relievers not only won’t impede on anyone coming up in 2023 but is a great way to improve the team without breaking the bank. With some of the teams top pitching prospects likely making their way to the majors next year, it’d be nice to have some added security behind them to hold things down in the late innings.

Other Notes

— Henry Davis played in his first professional game in right field on Saturday, and got to flash his arm in a small showing after an Erie hit a base hit to him and he fired the ball in to second to limit it to a single. It looked like his feet got crossed up a bit when going after a fly ball, but that’s not a surprise seeing it’s his first time out there.

While he isn’t the most agile of players, he isn’t someone who automatically relegate to first base if it’s not going to be behind the play, especially due to his arm. This feels like a ‘let’s give it a shot, because why not, and if it don’t work there’s always first base’.

— Termarr Johnson walked four times in the last two games, giving him 10 now in 14 games played with the Bradenton Marauders. He has a 12.1 BB% which nearly matches his strikeout rate at 15.8%.

He’s still 18-years-old and will still be that age when the 2023 season starts. Due to that, you almost wouldn’t blame the Pirates for starting him again in Single-A — you would almost wonder if they’d be interesting in seeing how he would respond to such a challenge in High-A.

That’d be incredibly aggressive, as Bradenton’s season would end tomorrow with a loss or Dunedin win, leaving him with just 14 games at the Single-A level. He’s really figuring things out incredibly quickly however.