Pittsburgh Pirates: Three Relievers to Watch This Spring

The Pittsburgh Pirates pitchers and catchers are set to report to spring training today.  Here are three relief pitchers to pay attention to this Spring:

With pitchers and catchers reporting to Bradenton today, the Pittsburgh Pirates will be setting out on a new course in 2020.  The team has brought in basically a completely new Front Office and coaching staff.  While they brought in some new players, they did not make to many moves to really alter the current roster.  Of course, the biggest move was the trade of Starling Marte, but coming back in that deal were two young prospects who will not impact the roster this season.

The theory behind this is that new General Manager Ben Cherington and company want to take stock of what they currently have on the team.  Last year, the Pittsburgh Pirates had their struggles, however, a lot of those struggles were due to a high volume of injuries.  This was especially true for the team’s pitching staff, which was ravished with injuries in both the starting rotation and the bullpen.

The good news is that spring training is about to start up and there are no real concerning injury question marks heading into it this season.  Of course, Jameson Taillon will be missing all of 2020 with his second Tommy-John surgery, but that was known.  On the flip side, it looks like the Pittsburgh Pirates bullpen is going to be in healthy shape this spring.  Here are three relievers to watch this spring:

The other reliever that is returning from a rather serious injury is Nick Burdi.  Burdi is in a very similar boat as Santana, although not coming off Tommy-John surgery.  The Pittsburgh Pirates picked up Burdi in a rule v trade with the Philadelphia Phillies, who selected him from the Twins in the 2017-18 offseason.  The Phillies picked him with the first overall pick in the rule v draft before flipping him to the Pirates for International bonus money.

Like Santana, Burdi showed a lot of promise in his big league debut.  He opened the 2019 season as one of the last men out of the bullpen but quickly showed the stuff to earn a bigger role.  He was throwing his fastball in the mid-90s and was showing off a really sharp slider that was generating a lot of swings and misses.

Overall his numbers look poor due to a small sample size and the injury that eventually sidelined him for the 2019 season.  He only threw 8.2 innings and had an ERA over 9.00, but his FIP and xFIP were both under 3.00, suggesting he was pitching much better than what the box score was showing.  The most impressive thing was that he struck out 17 batters in his 8.2 innings of work while only walked three.

On April 22nd Burdi pitched in his final game of the 2020 season.  He only made it through 0.1 innings and gave up five earned runs.  Then it happened.  Burdi was seen on the mound grabbing at his right bicep in a lot of pain.  It later came out that he tore his bicep from the bone and would miss the remainder of the season, although the injury is not viewed as significant of an injury as Tommy-John.

The Pittsburgh Pirates expect that Burdi is healthy and ready to go for the start of spring.  In an interview, he made comment on how this was something that was bothering him for a while but was misdiagnosed by the Twins medical team.  Hopefully, he is ready to go and is back to full health.

The last pitcher had a little bit of a different path than the other two relievers mentioned.  Keone Kela did in fact pitch a good part of 2019 and missed some time with shoulder fatigue, nothing that required a surgery or a large amount of time off.  In addition, he had some other issues off the field that led to him missing some time due to suspensions and such, which makes him a perfect candidate to watch this spring.

The Pittsburgh Pirates acquired Keone Kela at the 2018 Trade Deadline from the Texas Rangers.  At the time he was the Rangers closer but came to Pittsburgh viewed as the setup man.  Kela had a rough start to his 2019 campaign.  He pitched in 13 games through March and April and saw his ERA at an uncharacteristically high 4.63.  This obviously was not a good start for a big-time trade acquisition.  That is when he was placed on the Injured List with should fatigue, once again showing that his performance was being affected by an injury.

When Kela came back full-time, he showed exactly what the Pittsburgh Pirates thought they were getting in the hard-throwing reliever.  He was dominant in the second half of the season, pitching to a 0.50 ERA in 18 games and 18 innings.  Furthermore, he was generating a lot of swings and misses, sitting down 22 batters.  Overall, his numbers were quite impressive, earning a 2.12 ERA with 33 strikeouts in a minimal 29.1 innings.

With the arrest of former All-Star closer Felipe Vazquez, Keone Kela figures to be the lead candidate for the closer job this upcoming season.  Also, his injury was said to be bothering him during his 2019 spring training, so hopefully he does not have any setbacks this spring.  Now that the coaching staff has been changed over, there should be a new expectation in how things are handled in the locker room.  Hopefully, Kela will not have any issues like he did last year.

All three of these relievers could be big parts of this team’s bullpen this season.  All three of them have power stuff, and very well could set up the back end of the bullpen for this season.  Obviously  with Kela being the closer, the other two could fill into the seventh and eighth inning roles.

It will be interesting to see how Edgar Santana rebounds from his Tommy-John surgery.  He has had plenty of time off and the belief is that he will not be limited entering spring training.  Hopefully, he still has his mid 90s velocity to go along with his big-time slider.  The same can be said for Burdi as he comes back from his bicep injury.  If both of them have the same stuff they had before their injuries, then they very well could take a step forward.

Kela is the most important of the three pitchers.  Obviously, having a power closer who can perform consistently is very important.  If the team is winning games, then they obviously need someone they can rely on to shut the door.  If the team falls from contention, Kela could become a very attractive trade chip in July.

Furthermore, he is a free agent after this season and could be a very valuable trade chip to a team looking to infuse more young talent into the organization.  Teams in division races are always looking for high leverage bullpen arms.  If Kela can perform up to standards, the Bucs may have the hottest commodity on the relief market.