The MLB non-tender deadline passed at 5 PM on Friday evening, with the Pittsburgh Pirates agreeing to a deal with LHP Ryan Borucki, and tendering 2024 contracts to 34 players. Two pitchers were non-tendered, right-handers Osvaldo Bido and Hunter Stratton.
Borucki was added on a minor league deal in May, after previously being in the Cubs minor league system. He threw his sweeper more often, also getting more movement on the pitch. His slider offering generated 20% or higher swing and miss over the previous three seasons, although he led with his sinker. The Pirates had him leading with his slider this year, while also using a sweeper creatively, and the results were the best season in the 29-year-old’s career.
Borucki had a 2.45 ERA and a 3.50 FIP in 40.1 innings, serving almost every role from opener to leverage reliever. His 39.3% chase rate is well above the league average, and he starts with a first pitch strike almost 70 percent of the time. Kevin Gorman of the Trib had a great breakdown of Borucki’s season, where the lefty explains how he attacks on the first pitch with his sweeper to get ahead. His first pitch strike rate and his chase rate are some of the highest of his career, and for the first time in his career he produced below-average contact in the zone. Borucki gets ahead, and then makes people miss — inside the zone and out.
The Pirates brought him back for $1.6 million, according to Jason Mackey.
Two Pitchers Non-Tendered
The Pirates non-tendered Osvaldo Bido and Hunter Stratton, making them free agents. Both could re-sign with the Pirates on minor league deals. Their removal from the 40-man roster leaves the Pirates with three open spots.
Bido threw 50.2 innings in the majors in his rookie season, helping the Pirates in a swingman role when they needed pitching depth. He made nine starts, and 16 overall appearances, with a 5.86 ERA, but a 4.10 FIP. His numbers were elevated due to a high BABIP and a low strand rate. Bido has three pitches which get around average swing-and-miss, but no standout pitch for when he’s in trouble. He’s a good depth option, and could improve upon that by further developing one of his pitches for swing and miss.
Stratton was a late-season call-up, with the 2017 16th rounder making eight appearances in his MLB debut. He had a 2.25 ERA and a 4.76 FIP, while being prone to the long ball. Stratton actually excelled in his short amount of time at getting chases (39.6% vs 31.9% league average), and first-pitch strikes (74.5% vs 61.5%). He struggled inside the zone, where hitters swing an above-average 73.5% of the time and made contact at a 91.8% rate, above the league average of 85.4%. His best pitch is his cutter, which he led with in his brief appearance, but he doesn’t have a second pitch that can make hitters miss inside the zone.
Stratton is entering his age-27 season, and Bido is entering his age-28 season. Both have shown the talent to be Triple-A depth, while also getting a look this year at what they’d need to change in order to remain in the big leagues. If Borucki can make a successful adjustment at age 29, improvements are possible for both of these pitchers.
Arbitration Updates and Extension Candidates
The Pirates tendered contracts to 34 other players, including all of their remaining arbitration eligible players. Any player with more than three years of service time, but less than six is eligible for arbitration. There is a “Super Two” exception for the top 22% of players with service time between two and three years. Connor Joe falls into that group this year.
The Pirates just reached a deal with Borucki, avoiding that process with the lefty reliever. MLBTR’s Matt Swartz projected Borucki to receive $1.3 million in arbitration. The Pirates settled at $1.6 million, showing they’ve got his value higher. Borucki will be a free agent following the 2024 season, so this is a simple one-year deal.
Four players were tendered deals, with the chance to go to arbitration if the Pirates can’t reach an agreement by mid-January. The players, and their MLBTR projected arbitration salaries for 2024:
Mitch Keller: $6 million
JT Brubaker: $2.28 million
David Bednar: $4.7 million
Connor Joe: $2 million
Keller and Brubaker both have two years of control remaining. Bednar has three, and Joe has four. The Pirates could work out long-term deals with any of these players, rather than keeping them on the year-to-year arbitration schedule. If they sign for one year, they’d go through arbitration for their remaining team-controlled years, before reaching free agency. Any long-term deals would likely come with the Pirates buying out control of free agency years, in exchange for the player receiving financial certainty of a multi-year guaranteed deal up front. Joe and Brubaker are more likely to be single-year guys.
Mitch Keller would be the biggest candidate for an extension. The Pirates have almost zero reliable starting pitching without him, and he’s coming off an age-27 season where he struck out 210 batters in 194.1 innings — setting a franchise record for right-handed pitchers. Keller has been progressing steadily the last three years, emerging this year as an above-average starter and an All-Star. At the very least, a three year deal could allow the Pirates some certainty in planning for their hopeful ascension into being contenders.
DAVID BEDNAR IS A GIFT FOR THE PIRATES
How the Pirates handle Bednar will be interesting. This year he saw a massive increase in his chase rate, his in-zone effectiveness, and his overall swing and miss rate. Those numbers below, with the league averages in parenthesis:
Chase%: 38.1% (31.9)
O-Contact%: 60.5% (62.3%)
Z-Swing%: 77.1% (68.8%)
Z-Contact%: 77.1% (85.4%)
F-Strike%: 59.2% (61.5%)
SwStr%: 15.9% (11.1%)
Key Points:
- Bednar gets batters to chase at an elite rate, and they make below-average contact when doing so.
- He gets an above-average amount of swings in the zone and a below-average amount of contact in the zone, which is the right direction for those trends to be going for the pitcher.
- He’s got three pitches with individual swing and miss rates of 15% of more, which makes him one of the best pitchers on the team, and in the game.
If there’s one drawback, it’s that Bednar doesn’t start off 0-1 as often as the average pitcher. He doesn’t have the same mentality as Borucki in stealing a strike. Bednar comes in firing fastballs, which still get swinging strikes at the same rate as Borucki’s sweeper. The mind of hitters is tired late in games, so having Bednar speed things up is advantageous. If he starts getting ahead of hitters consistently, he could take another step forward as one of the best relievers in the game.
Traditional baseball player valuation methods say that reliever value is fungible. I’ve spent years on this site arguing to trade MLB closers at their highest values, cashing in on the success in the limited role. That’s been a good call most of the time. Joel Hanrahan brought back Mark Melancon. Mark Melancon brought back… like I said, most of the time the return was good. But on the bright side, Tony Watson brought back Oneil Cruz. There’s plenty of arguments in a vacuum to support the idea of trading Bednar for higher value, and in theory letting one of Colin Holderman or Dauri Moreta step into the role.
There are some days where I think about David Bednar in a way that makes me think I suffered a stroke and I’m currently in a coma. The Pittsburgh Pirates have a closer who is one of the elite performers in the game at his position across multiple seasons. He’s from Pittsburgh. He enters every game in the ninth inning to Renegade. This isn’t real. I’m either actively dreaming this scenario, or the world is elaborately Truman Showing me. I haven’t figured out which is which, but if we accept that this is reality, then it makes the situation simple: If the Pirates, or anyone, is thinking trade valuation with Bednar, you’re missing the entire boat that ferries winning attitudes to the island of championships.
I can’t think of a better gift to the Pirates than David Bednar. This is an organization which underwent a rebuild just months before a global pandemic closed down the world. That delayed their rebuild process, but also limited their scouting opportunities ahead of trading their best players. That’s very unfortunate.
In the trade that sent away Joe Musgrove, the Pirates received Bednar as one of five players. He had a 7.11 ERA and a 4.61 FIP with the Padres in his age-25 season across 6.1 innings. He was in that Bido/Stratton territory. The most interesting thing about him was that he was from Pittsburgh, and if you don’t understand how important that is to the people of Pittsburgh, then you’ve never driven through the tunnels into the city before in your life. This addition, and his immediate emergence as a shutdown reliever, was very fortunate.
When we talk about reliever sustainability, I don’t think Bednar fits any mold. How many times do you think Bednar grew up watching the Steelers, dreaming about the chance to enter a game with Renegade playing? How much of that drives him? How valuable is that to the Pirates? No other closer in baseball, in a future playoff game at PNC Park, could generate the Steelers-level reaction like Bednar — Entering the game to Renedage, among a sea of screaming fans wearing all black.
David Bednar is a gift.
He’s one of the best pitchers in the game, one of the best closers in the game, he keeps improving into his oncoming age 29 season, and the Pirates have him under control through his age 31 season. They’re also hopefully entering a stretch where they’ll start to contend, which makes his role and production valuable to their organization.
They could go year-to-year with him, but the value of elite relievers goes way up in arbitration. If they can lock down a deal with him to make him their franchise closer, it would be a smart move.
One day, when David Bednar is done being the closer in Pittsburgh, we can resume the normal talk of closer trade valuations. Until then, this is the Pirates’ chance at their own version of Mariano Rivera or Jonathan Papelbon — a shutdown closer who encapsulates the team and the city’s vibe, and brings them all together in the final moments of the game.
And the added bonus is that he’s from Pittsburgh. And enters the biggest defensive moment of the game to Renegade. Someone wake me up.
