Well, the beginning of the 2024 Pittsburgh Pirates’ decline could be felt for some time. The Pirates have been in a pattern of mediocrity since May, failing to realize the potential of their stellar starting lineup but doing just enough to stay in the race for the National League wild card.

With the offense largely failing to improve internally and neither the team’s management nor its manager showing enough urgency, it was only a matter of time before the floodgates opened for a typical Pittsburgh Pirates second-half collapse.

But how could the dam break so suddenly? Going into a crucial six-game home series against two teams chasing them in the National League wild card race, the Pirates had all the momentum as the front office “sold out” just before the trade deadline and pulled off a crucial series win in Houston against the vaunted Astros.

Everyone hates Andy Haines and the Pirates offense, and usually that hatred is justified. But they aren’t the main reason for this recent disastrous home loss, as they averaged five runs per game during that time. On a broader level, the offense isn’t even the most disappointing aspect of this team. Given how little the organization invested in it in the offseason, few people expected this unit to be ranked in the top 10, and maybe even the top 15, in baseball.

History tells us that the best bullpens make it to October and go far. Especially for small-market teams like the Pirates, how well their bullpen performs matters. Overall, to say the Pirates’ bullpen has underperformed is an understatement, and it pretty much destroyed any playoff aspirations this team had in a single week.

At the start of the season, this bullpen was touted as the team’s strength. In March, Fangraphs ranked Pittsburgh’s bullpen as the fourth-best in baseball, and MLB.com rated it the third-best. Statistically, however, it’s the opposite: It currently ranks in the bottom five in the league in categories such as ERA (earned run average), blown saves (28 saves in 52 opportunities) and losses (26).

It’s important to note that the season-ending injury to RHP Dauri Moreta during spring training and the absence of LHP Ryan Borucki for most of the season destroyed the overall health and depth of this bullpen more than most realize. But guys like RHPs Hunter Stratton and Kyle Nicolas have worked their way up through the Pirates’ system and filled the void nicely. This bullpen imploded largely because the supposed three-headed monster of LHP Aroldis Chapman and RHPs Colin Holderman and David Bednar never came together consistently.

The Pirates’ signing of Aroldis Chapman was an unusual business decision for the organization. The Pirates made Chapman – a reliever in the fall of his career who is still showing signs of greatness – the team’s highest-paid player for the 2024 season, giving him $10.5 million on a one-year deal. It was nice to see such an aggressive signing from Ben Cherington, but for the Pirates, $10.5 million is a significant investment for a back-end reliever they perhaps could have done without. In hindsight, that money could have been spent on lineup needs and cheaper bullpen reinforcements behind Holderman and Bednar.

To date, however, Aroldis Chapman is their most reliable threat out of the bullpen. The experience with Chapman was not pleasant for a while, as his walk rate and WHIP spiraled out of control in the early months of the season. However, he has mostly settled in well since June.

The investment in a reliable Chapman would only have been worthwhile if David Bednar and Colin Holderman continued to prove themselves as first-class relievers. But things went unexpectedly quickly downhill for the two right-handers.

Holderman started 2024 full steam ahead after recovering from a bad bout of flu during spring training, not allowing an earned run in 26 of his first 27 appearances. His decline had been evident for over a month, however, and he completely collapsed when Derek Shelton couldn’t hide him behind the solid work of RHP Carmen Mldozinski in later innings.

As I watched Holderman over the last month and a half — and even before he started having problems — it seemed like he was avoiding his sinker and overusing his sweeper. That was hard to understand considering his fastball can hit 99 or 100 on any game with movement.

The numbers show that Holderman has completely changed his pitch selection this season. According to Fangraphs, the sinker was his primary pitcher in 2023, which he threw 50 percent of the time. This year, the sinker was thrown only 27 percent of the time, while the sweeper became the primary pitcher at a rate of 47 percent.

While the success of both pitches is about the same as last year, it’s easy to see that Holderman’s deadly sweeper (.189 opponents’ batting average) has become a liability of late. If you throw the same breaking pitch repeatedly in an at-bat and eventually leave one lying over the plate — as he did last Friday against Geraldo Perdomo and last Sunday against Joc Pederson — major league hitters will take advantage, no matter how effective the pitch normally is.

Despite the varying use of his sweeper and sinker, the cutter is the outlier in his pitch arsenal. In 2023, Holderman threw the cutter 189 times, the same number of times he has thrown it so far in 2024. Opposing hitters have a .324 batting average against his cutter this year, compared to a .231 average in 2023.

Even though his overall numbers are similar to last year, Holderman will have to make some adjustments, as it’s hard to remember him being this consistently bad over such a long period of time.

Bednar’s poor season is more of a mystery, which is troubling. The simplest explanation is that hitters have gotten used to his four-seam fastball, which used to be an untouchable pitch. He battled injuries twice this season (once during spring training) and was back to his usual self before entering his most recent IL stint. Bednar’s average velocity on his fastball and splitter has improved slightly from last season, so it’s hard to conclude that injuries are the reason for his struggles.

The Pirates’ roster still has many weaknesses, but management and coaches should make a healthy, stable and strong bullpen a top priority to help the team remain competitive in 2025. Because without a healthy back end of the bullpen that successfully finishes games, the foundation of Paul Skenes, Jared Jones and Mitch Keller will be useless.