Pittsburgh Pirates: Bullpen Leaders without Nick Burdi

The Pittsburgh Pirates lost their best reliever this past week for the season.  Who are the statcast leaders in the bullpen now?

Things have gotten off to a rough start for the Pittsburgh Pirates pitching staff.  Entering the 2020 season, many expected the pitching staff not to be great, but there were some intriguing arms to at least pay attention to.  Well, some of those arms are already done for the year.

One of those arms was going to be reliever Nick Burdi.  Burdi was working his way back from missing basically all of last year.  This year he came out early and looked like his old self, throwing in the upper 90s with big-time spin rates.  Instead, Burdi was once again placed on the 45 Day Injury-List promptly ending his season.

Now that the Pittsburgh Pirates have lost not just their closer, but also their most dominant statcast relievers.  If Nick Burdi can stay healthy, he has some of the best pure stuff in the game.  The Bucs will surely miss him in this bullpen but also will miss out on him developing more this season.

Who are the Pittsburgh Pirates leaders in terms of statcast numbers now?  The obvious candidate for best spin-rate in the bullpen is right-handed pitcher Chris Stratton.  That has been Stratton’s calling card since coming to Pittsburgh Pirates.

When the team moved him into the bullpen they saw a bump in his spin rates showing he could be more effective as a reliever.  So far out of all qualified pitchers who have at least 10 IP, Stratton’s fastball has the fifth-best spin rate at 2599 rpm.  Trevor Bauer leads the list at 2797 rpm.

The velocity that is currently coming out of the Pittsburgh Pirates bullpen is the scary thing.  This team at one point had some of the best power arms in baseball, to the point someone throwing 92-94 mph was considered to be slow.  Now the Pittsburgh Pirates leading pitcher in terms of velocity is Dovydas Neverauskas, who is averaging 94.8 mph which ranks 43rd in the league for pitchers.  This means that the consistently hardest fastball the Pittsburgh Pirates have is coming from one of their worst relievers.  Furthermore, they do not even have a pitcher who ranks in the top 40 in velocity.

To say the least, this pitching staff needs help.  The team’s bullpen has been decimated by injuries and a lack of depth from the minor leagues.  Not to mention the rotation is not all that inspiring right now either.  Hopefully, some of the young arms coming up can stay healthy and start to develop or this team’s bullpen could be in trouble for a long time to come.