The Pittsburgh Pirates have finally swung a trade for a reliever, this time with the Atlanta Braves. They sent catcher Joey Bart to Atlanta for former Pirates hurler Hunter Stratton, who was recently designated for assignment by the Braves. The Pirates pursuing Stratton was something many wanted the Pirates to do. It is the first notable swap the Pirates have made this season, so how did they do in their first move?
Grading The Pirates’ Return For Joey Bart
The Braves Get A Catcher
The San Francisco Giants originally drafted Bart with the second overall pick in the 2018 draft. However, he failed to find his footing in MLB with the Giants, and they DFA’d him at the start of the 2024 draft. That’s when the Bucs acquired him for minor league reliever Austin Strickland, and he immediately broke out in black and gold. He slashed .265/.337/.462 with a .347 wOBA, and 121 wRC+ over 282 plate appearances. Bart hit for plenty of power, with a dozen homers and an .198 isolated slugging percentage. His 7.8% walk rate clocked in around league average, though he struck out at a 25.9% pace.
Joey Bart. What a pickup.
On a tear. 8 hits in his last 15 at-bats. pic.twitter.com/elzHpvF6lo
— Dan Zangrilli (@DanZangrilli) August 4, 2024
Despite his offensive breakout in 2024, Bart regressed to about a league-average hitter in 2025. He turned in a .696 OPS, with a .317 wOBA, and 101 wRC+ over 332 plate appearances. After going yard 12 times in 2024 in less than 300 trips to the plate, he hit just four home runs in more playing time in 2025. Bart’s K% also rose to 28%, and the only major positive from his bottom line was his 12% walk rate. His .355 OBP was the fourth best among all catchers in ‘25 with at least 300 plate appearances, but his .091 ISO was the third lowest.
2026 didn’t look like a return to form for Bart, at least throughout a small sample size of play. He slashed just .259/.290/.379 with a .294 wOBA and 82 wRC+ over his first 61 plate appearances of the season. His strikeout rate only continued to climb, this time to 33.2%, and he only drew a free pass 3.2% of the time. Bart’s exit velocity had declined from 88.2 MPH between 2024 and 2025 to just 86.2 MPH before a foot infection sidelined him in early May.
Defensively, Bart has struggled. He has -11 defensive runs saved, with -5.5 framing runs over 1352 innings behind the dish for the Pirates. He also struggled at blocking, with -8 blocking runs. Bart showed off a strong arm behind the plate, but a poor reaction time. His overall pop time sat around two seconds in 2024 and 2025. However, he shaved off some time in 2026, posting a 1.92-second poptime before his injury. Still, many were concerned about Bart’s work with many of the pitchers on the Pirates’ staff.
Pirates Reunite With An Old Friend
The Pirates drafted Hunter Stratton with their 16th-round pick in 2017. The right-hander became a late bloomer and broke into the MLB in 2024. His rookie season consisted of 37.2 innings, where he posted a solid 3.58 ERA, 3.25 FIP, and 1.17 WHIP. While Stratton had a sub-par 20.7% K%, he did have an above-average 27.4% whiff rate and 32.7% chase rate. That high chase rate also meant he put up a low 4.4% walk rate. Stratton also excelled at limiting hard contact and home runs, with an 87.3 MPH exit velocity, 6.1% barrel rate, and 0.72 HR/9 ratio.
Unfortunately, Stratton’s rookie season got derailed by a torn patella tendon in August. He would start 2025 in the minor leagues, but would struggle when the Bucs called him to the Majors. The Pirates would trade Stratton to the Braves for Titus Dumitru in July, who is hitting well at High-A this year. Stratton struggled through 19.1 MLB innings in ‘25, though he did pitch well at Triple-A, where he had a 2.92 ERA and 16.7% K-BB% over 37 innings pitched.
Stratton has spent nearly all of 2026 at the Braves’ Triple-A affiliate. The numbers haven’t been very pretty, as he is posting a 5.21 ERA, 5.08 FIP, and 1.62 WHIP over his first 24.2 innings of the year. He has only struck out 20.2% of batters with an unimpressive 14.2% walk rate. Of the few positives, Stratton still has a quality 0.72 HR/9 ratio and a groundball rate of 47.2%. The Braves recently DFA’d Stratton earlier this week.
Did The Pirates Overpay?
On paper, the Pirates trading a semi-regular catcher who has been an average or better hitter two of the last three years for a middle reliever who was recently DFA’d looks like an overpay. However, Bart has declined in offensive production each of the last three years. Aside from his poptime, his defense has not improved dramatically either. The Pirates attempted to move Bart over the offseason, but received very little interest. The most was the Houston Astros kicking the tires on Bart.
The Pirates’ catcher depth chart is already deep. Even with Henry Davis’ struggles, the Pirates still have Rafael Flores Jr. on hand as a similar bat-first alternative to Bart. Endy Rodriguez’s breakout has also given the Pirates’ catching situation some stability for now. Bart was the odd man out, given his decline in hitting and the Pirates’ already crowded depth chart.
The Pirates also needed to make a move for a reliever, anyway possible. Since the start of May, they rank in the bottom ten in ERA, FIP, WHIP, walk rate, and barrel rate. Stratton may not be a pretty solution, but he is someone with previous success with the Pirates. They need bullpen help any way they can get, and the Pirates didn’t part with anything significant to get it.
Final Grade: C+
Main Photo: Scott Galvin- Imagn Images
