North Shore Tavern Mound Visit: How Bednar gets hitters to miss in the zone

After one of the best rookie seasons in the National League in 2021 (at least in this reporter's opinion) and a strong start in 2022, David Bednar is emerging as one of the game’s premier relievers.

He was named the National League relief pitcher of the month of May, and he’s well on his way to earning an All-Star nod next month.

"It's cool. It's definitely an honor," Bednar told reporters Friday. "But ultimately it means when I'm throwing it well, I'm giving our guys a chance to win games. That's the main thing and the only thing that matters."

Bednar is throwing well – 1.33 ERA, 1.93 FIP, 35.7% strikeout rate, sub-5% walk rate, 10 saves in 11 chances – and those innings are coming in high leverage situations, often the eighth or ninth inning.

It’s why, going by Win Probability Added – or what is your team’s chances of winning when you entered the game compared to when you exit it – Bednar has been one of the top relievers in the game. In fact, the only Senior Circuit reliever who bests him is Josh Hader:

VIA FANGRAPHS

Hader is undeniably one of the best pitchers in the game, but he and the other pitchers near the top of this list have had more leverage opportunities than Bednar because their teams are above .500.

Also keep in mind that Bednar’s last outing of the month was his 50 pitch outing against the Dodgers last Monday where he blew the save in the eighth and closed it in the ninth. Going by FanGraphs’ win probability, his WPA that day was -0.37, with most of the emphasis going his eighth inning rather than closing out the ninth. Even with that outing, he’s among the league’s leaders in one of the best ways to evaluate relievers.

It’s a good start to the season. Really good, actually. Among the best in recent franchise history, in fact. Baseball Reference measures WPA differently than FanGraphs, so Bednar has 1.6 WPA by their calculations.

Excluding his save Sunday, here is where that ranks among Pirate relievers of the last 50 years over their first 21 games of the season:

VIA STATHEAD.

One outing (where again, he got the win and had to pitch another inning!) is keeping Bednar away from rubbing elbows with Goose Gossage’s and Jose Mesa’s strong starts near the very top. Even with that outing, it’s a terrific early showing that goes beyond just his save percentage.

Because these aren’t usually your traditional saves. Bednar has had to work for these, leading the league with four saves where he had to record at least four outs. Three of them have been two innings. No other pitcher in baseball has more than one save where they had to get at least six outs.

You have to go all the way back to Julian Tavarez in 2003 for the last time a Pirate pitcher had at least three saves that lasted 2+ innings.

I’ll admit I’ve been keeping notes for a Bednar Mound Visit for awhile, especially to highlight how he beats hitters in the zone. His zone contact rate is just 75%, the seventh-lowest of the 107 pitchers who have tossed at least 20 innings this year. 

When he throws it in the zone, good things do happen. Here’s how his ERA correlates with how often he is in the strike zone:

There’s some fluctuation, but generally speaking, when he’s in the zone, he’s keeping guys off the plate.

“It’s been my mantra since I’ve come over,” Bednar told me during the west coast road trip. “Just competing in the zone. Trusting my stuff. When I do that, good things happen.”

Sometimes all he needs is trust. Bednar is second among relievers in whiffs on pitches over the heart of the zone with 24, as defined by Baseball Savant. (Keegan Akin of the Orioles has 26.) 20 of those were fastballs, tied with Akin for the most. 

He gets away with the occasional mistake fastballs because he can drop in a curve or splitter which tunnel off of it:

Going by Pitch Info’s pitch values, all three of Bednar’s offerings have been at least two runs above average (2.4 runs for fastball, 2.8 for the curve, 2.0 for the splitter). The only other reliever with three offerings worth 2+ runs is Jason Adam of the Rays (fastball, slider, changeup).

“It's a little bit of deception and it's the way he spins the ball,” Derek Shelton said. “He controls it. The other thing is when you're talking 96 [mph] to 76 because of the breaking ball and they're tunneling very similarly, it makes for challenging hitting."

Bednar is deadly in the strike zone. What’s amazing is he doesn’t have to live there, though.

Check that FanGraphs rolling chart above again. Bednar hasn’t been throwing it in the strike zone as much of late. He still is in the top 20 among those relievers in how frequently he’s in the zone, but he can nibble too. 

That’s exactly what he did Sunday:

That’s the pitch chart of someone who struck out two and got a groundout in a 1-2-3 inning for the save. He was aided by a couple strike calls on pitches inside, but only three of those pitches are actually in the zone. Batters chase and whiff at his out of the zone offerings at above average clips, which is more than enough when combined with his in-zone stats.

Not to overthink this, but this could be one of the other reasons why Bednar is so tough to hit in the zone: He doesn’t have to beat you in there. He has pitches that look like strikes until the bottom falls out and it’s 20 mph slower than expected. At the same time, he’s always been able to pound the zone as well, so you have to gear up for 96 mph.

And when he can do that for potentially more than one inning, well, that’s why he was the pitcher of the month.