Trade grades: Yankees to address top need by landing reliever David Bednar from Pirates

New York Times

6 days ago

NEW YORK — New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone did not hide his desire for the front office to add pitchers at the trade deadline, telling reporters he hoped the club would acquire at least one or two more arms.
After adding three hitters to their roster over the past few days, the No. 1 need for the Yankees to address was in their reeling bullpen.
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The Yankees are close to acquiring closer David Bednar from the Pittsburgh Pirates, team sources told The Athletic on Thursday. Bednar, 30, is under club control through the 2026 season and is making $5.9 million this season. The deal means Pittsburgh's hometown closer is hitting the road.
The Pirates will receive catching/first base prospect Rafael Flores, catching prospect Edgleen Perez and outfield prospect Brian Sanchez in return, a league source confirmed to The Athletic. Flores was No. 13 on Keith Law's list of the Yankees' top 20 prospects heading into the season. He's hitting .279 with 16 home runs, 60 RBIs and an .826 OPS in 97 games between Double and Triple-A this season.
Flores, 24, only boosted his stock this season, crushing Double A (14 home runs, .841 OPS) before recently getting promoted to Triple A. He's considered a work-in-progress defensively, learning a lot from his close relationship with Cincinnati Reds catcher Jose Trevino. He's the third catching prospect the Yankees have traded in a little over a year, including Agustín Ramirez to the Miami Marlins and Carlos Narváez to the Boston Red Sox.
Perez, 19, hit .209 at High A this season, and was the Yankees' sixth-best prospect at the start of the year. He's considered a good athlete with a chance to stick at the position and become a potentially average hitter. Sanchez, 21, had an .811 OPS at High A.
Bednar, No. 19 on The Athletic's final trade deadline Big Board, gives the Yankees another swing-and-miss reliever, something the club has lacked with Fernando Cruz and Mark Leiter Jr. on the injured list. Bednar's 33.1 percent strikeout rate ranks in the 95th percentile this season. Bednar immediately becomes the Yankees' top reliever in terms of average fastball velocity, another element the club has lacked this season. The Yankees' relievers have the fourth-slowest average fastball in MLB; Bednar's fastball averages 97.1 mph.
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Bednar, 30, has rebounded remarkably after being optioned to Triple A in early April following a rocky start to the season. (That turbulence was not isolated; Bednar had a 5.77 ERA last year.) Since returning to Pittsburgh on April 19, Bednar has a 1.70 ERA and 16 saves, with 50 strikeouts in 37 innings. He was named the National League's reliever of the month in June.
Bednar has the high-90s mph heater one now expects from any late-inning reliever, but this season he's throwing his four-seamer less than ever (48.4 percent) and leaning heavily on his curveball (34.2 percent), with the splitter (17.4 percent) as a clear third pitch. The secondary pitches have been especially effective this season in neutralizing left-handed hitters. By the All-Star break, only two of the 140 curves and splitters Bednar had thrown to lefties this season had gone for a hit.
The Yankees were in desperate need of upgrading their bullpen. Since the start of June, the Yankees' 4.89 bullpen ERA is the fifth worst in the sport. They've cycled in various relievers, hoping one or two of them could become difference makers, but none have stuck around. Boone has only had three trusted relievers he could turn to in recent weeks, with Devin Williams, Luke Weaver and Tim Hill emerging as the club's inner circle in their bullpen.
Leiter is expected back from the injured list next week, with Cruz likely a few weeks behind. When those two return, the Yankees' bullpen should be in much better shape, especially with the addition of Bednar.
The Bednar trade also has 2026 implications for the Yankees. Williams and Weaver are both free agents at season's end. The Yankees have not signed a free agent reliever to a contract worth over $10 million per season since 2019, when the club re-signed Zack Britton to a deal that paid him an average annual salary of $13 million. Williams should eclipse that mark, and it's possible Weaver can, too, after a resurgent two years in the Bronx.
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Bednar, whose brother Will was the San Francisco Giants' first-round pick in 2021, was not a touted prospect. Recruited lightly while at Mars Area (Pa.) High, he attended Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., and eventually garnered some scouts' attention on the summer-ball circuit. He was drafted in the 35th round by the San Diego Padres in 2016 and signed for $50,000.
Bednar had brief stints with the Padres in 2019 and 2020 before being traded home to Pittsburgh in a deal that sent Joe Musgrove back to his home of San Diego. Bednar quickly gained the trust of Pittsburgh's coaching staff, earning the closer role after turning in a 2.23 ERA in 2021. Bednar was an All-Star for the first time in 2022 (2.61 ERA) and again in 2023 (2.00 ERA) when he also led the National League with 39 saves.
The Pirates, meanwhile, are expected to continue their sell-off as the trade deadline nears. So far, they have moved Adam Frazier and Bednar. When manager Don Kelly, another Pittsburgh native, calls down the bullpen hoping to protect a lead in the ninth inning, he'll no longer ask for the hometown kid.
The Yankees are still expected to be active until the deadline expires. They may be in the hunt for another reliever, and they have been searching for another starting pitcher, with multiple candidates on their radar, including the Pirates' Andrew Heaney, according to another league source.
Yankees: B
Pirates: B-
Andy McCullough: Bednar has rebounded from an atrocious 2024 to recapture the form that made him an All-Star in 2022 and 2023. He can miss bats and get hitters to chase outside the zone. Reducing his walk rate has helped, too. In other words, he's the exact sort of reliever the Yankees could use. The team will just have to hope he performs better than the last closer acquired from the National League Central: Part of the reason the Yankees need Bednar is because Devin Williams has flopped in the Bronx.
Flores went undrafted out of college in 2022 but has slugged his way up the Yankees' pipeline. He was recently promoted to Triple-A Scranton. He's a tweener who might not throw well enough to stick at catcher but might not hit enough to hang at first base. But he's acquitted himself quite well with Double-A Somerset these past two seasons. The Pirates can give him a shot in the majors sooner than the Yankees would have.
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Perez has demonstrated negligible power in three professional seasons, but he is also a teenage catcher, so maybe that will change. For right now, he has been slugging .236 in the class-A Florida State League. Not ideal. Given the packages for rental relievers elsewhere, this return feels a tad light.
Yankees: B+
Pirates: B-
Stephen J. Nesbitt: After watching every reliever from Jhoan Duran to Ryan Helsley, Mason Miller, Kyle Finnegan and the Rogers twins be traded over the past 24 hours, the Yankees did not depart the trade deadline empty-handed. Bednar, who unlike Devin Williams and Luke Weaver is under club control beyond this season, gives the Yankees a late-inning option with big swing-and-miss stuff. Bednar has a 95th percentile strikeout rate (33.1 percent), fueled by a devastating curveball-splitter secondary combination that complements a fastball that averages 97.1 mph.
However, the background here shouldn't be ignored. After back-to-back All-Star seasons in 2022 and 2023, Bednar fell apart last season. He had a 5.77 ERA, heard boos from the hometown crowd, and was demoted from the closer's role late in the season. He regained that role in spring training this year, then turned in three bad outings in March and was sent to Triple A. It was a humbling moment for a player who was once a long-shot prospect — a 35th-round pick out of Lafayette College — but who had since grown accustomed to pumping pitches past major league hitters. Since returning to the major league roster in mid-April, Bednar has a 1.70 ERA in 37 innings. He is throwing the baseball well. But it's not long ago that he was struggling mightily.
For the Pirates, the sting is more from the fact that Bednar, the kid from up the road in Mars, Pa., is leaving home without having experienced a winning season playing for his childhood favorite team. They will backfill his spot in the bullpen with either Dennis Santana or the newly acquired Taylor Rogers.
The best player in the return is 24-year-old catcher Rafael Flores, who Baseball America ranked No. 8 in the Yankees system. He was recently promoted to Triple A and could slot in at catcher — a position of immediate need for the Pirates — as soon as next season. He can really hit, though there's some swing-and-miss in the profile. The other prospects will take longer to reach the majors. Edgleen Perez, 19, is ranked No. 16 in the Yankees system but Baseball America; Brian Sanchez, 20, is ranked No. 24.
All in all, three bats with upside feels like a fair return for Bednar, but it also seems underwhelming considering the going rate for a closer these days (OK, this exact day). The Pirates' asking price as of a few days ago was two top-10 prospects for Bednar. They got one, plus a couple top-25 guys. That's a reasonable place to land.
(Photo of Bednar: Justin Berl / Getty Images)