Talking with Oscar Marin this week, most of our conversation centered on the rotation and how the Pirates have more pieces in place and depth than in year's past. It's a group that, if properly developed, could become a strength for the team.
But towards the end of the conversation, Marin made sure to bring up the bullpen too.
"If we keep those guys on the field, we're going to be pretty dang good," Marin said.
Health was a luxury the bullpen simply did not have last season. David Bednar was an All-Star, but was shelved for about a third of the season. Yerry De Los Santos showed promised but had his season cut short with a shoulder strain. Duane Underwood Jr. missed a good chunk of time, Wil Crowe finished the year on the injured list, Chase De Jong was sidelined for a bit with a knee strain. It's unrealistic to think your bullpen is going to be healthy all year, but you can also hope you aren't missing two or three or four important pitchers for long stretches over the course of the season.
And it's made even worse when there wasn't much bullpen depth available. The waiver wire was often used to help fill in those gaps in the bullpen, leading to an ugly 4.72 ERA as a bullpen, the second-worst in baseball. The Pirates seem to have a little more depth this year, including Colin Selby, a hard-throwing righty who was added to the 40-man this winter, but it's still safe to say that if this bullpen is going to be good, they're going to need to stay healthy.
That is especially true for Colin Holderman.
The Pirates acquired Holderman in a one-for-one trade with the Mets for Daniel Vogelbach last year. According to Mets general manager Billy Eppler, Holderman was the player the Pirates "dug their heels in on" in order to get that trade done. Still technically a rookie since he only threw 28 1/3 innings last year, Holderman recorded a 3.91 ERA between his two clubs and showed a knack for being able to get outs late.
That last part is important because the Pirates don't have a pitcher outside of Bednar with a closer/setup man resume, but there's plenty of belief in the organization that Holderman can be one of those leverage arms. Perhaps it was put best by De Jong in a conversation we had last month at the ballpark. Unprompted, he pointed out Holderman and simply said, "he's going to be important for us."
High pressure for someone who just converted to the bullpen back in 2021.
There is definitely a lot to like about Holderman's reliever profile, especially the slider. It spins (averaging over 2,400 RPM), it gets two more inches of run than the average slider and the movement comes in a way that can mirror his sinker. Last year, there were 40 plate appearances that ended with Holderman throwing a slider. 19 of them ended in strikeouts, four in base hits and none with an extra-base hit.
The sinker didn't get as glowing of marks, but it sits comfortably in the mid-90s and he locates it in that bottom part of the zone. He may never get a ton of swings and misses with it, but working on those low corners usually won't hurt you.
There's reason to believe Holderman could become a quality late-inning reliever. If, of course, he stays healthy. He told me last month that he is back to "100%," but the challenge will be to stay that way throughout a season.
That's been a problem for Holderman his entire career. With the exception of 2020 (where there was no season), Holderman has made multiple trips to the injured list every year since 2017. A good slider and late-inning profile only goes so far if he isn't on the field.
Last year's shoulder injury cost him the last month and a half. Going into his winter, figuring out why became a mission.
"When it happened again, we really need to deep dive into it to figure out what's going on and how can we fix this, because this shouldn't be happening the way it was," Holderman told me last month.
After a deep dive into the biomechanics and studying how his arm moved, it became clear that he needed to get stronger. Holderman found that there was an issue with what he referred to as his relationship with "inner" strength and "outer" strength. Inner strength is ramping up his pitch, the wind up. He was doing that fine. His problem was outer, or stopping. He had two much arm action and his momentum was carrying him too far.
Looking at this strikeout from mid-August, there is a lot of arm movement after he has delivered the ball, to the point that you can see his hand on video again, having crossed his body:
The belief is that if he can cut that down, it'll take pressure off of his shoulder. He teased there could be some mechanical tweaks to go with it, but the arm action is the key here.
If he stays on the field, Holderman could be a plus reliever for a bullpen that needs impact arms. There's a reason why the Pirates weren't going to trade Vogelbach without him being involved in the trade. He could show that in 2023.
