{"id":122080,"date":"2026-05-17T13:36:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T17:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=122080"},"modified":"2026-05-17T13:36:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T17:36:23","slug":"the-david-bednar-trade-is-one-of-the-worst-rp-trades-in-recent-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/05\/17\/the-david-bednar-trade-is-one-of-the-worst-rp-trades-in-recent-history\/","title":{"rendered":"The David Bednar Trade: A Clear Misstep in Recent Reliever Transactions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pittsburgh Pirates traded former All-Star David Bednar<\/a> to the New York Yankees at the 2025 trade deadline. In return, the Pirates received three prospects, including Rafael Flores Jr.<\/a>, Edgleen Perez<\/a>, and Brian Sanchez<\/a>. With the Pirates\u2019 bullpen struggling, many have looked back on this trade as one that doomed this bullpen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The David Bednar trade is aging extremely poorly, even less than a year later<\/h2>\n

Setting expectations<\/h2>\n

<\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s first make the expectations clear: David Bednar was never going to get an insane return, like what Mason Miller<\/a> netted the Athletics at the deadline, or what Aroldis Chapman<\/a> got the New York Yankees at the 2016 deadline. Both were traded for what at the time were consensus top ten prospects in the sport. However, that doesn\u2019t mean the Pirates should have settled for what they did.<\/p>\n

A bad trade from the start<\/h2>\n

The prospects the Pirates recieved for Bednar were already showing red flags. Flores had plenty of question marks in 2025. According to Baseball America in his pre-2025 write-up<\/a>, only his power tool projected as average or better. His hit, arm, and fielding tools recieved a 40-grade. 50 is considered average on the 20-80 scale, and 40 is considered below-average. The only item on his scouting report that projected as average or better was his power. Perez was ranked as just the Yankees’ 17th best prospect, and Sanchez was not even among BA’s top 30 Yankees prospects.<\/p>\n

Comparisons only make the Bednar trade look worse in retrospect<\/h2>\n

<\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n

Bednar was far from the only high-end reliever traded in 2025. Arguably, the second-most notable, behind Miller, was Jhoan Duran<\/a>. The Minnesota Twins traded Duran to the Philadelphia Phillies for two prospects. One was Mick Abel<\/a>, who was a top-100 prospect as late as 2024 and is now a part of their rotation. The Mets acquired three of the top relief trade targets last year in Ryan Helsley<\/a> from the St. Louis Cardinals, Tyler Rogers<\/a> from the San Francisco Giants, and current Pirates reliever Gregory Soto<\/a> from the Baltimore Orioles. In return for Helsley, the Cards received Jesus Baez<\/a>, Nate Dohm<\/a>, and Frank Elissalt<\/a>. The Giants arguably received the best package, with Jose Butto<\/a>, Drew Gilbert<\/a>, and Blade Tidwell<\/a>. Meanwhile, the O\u2019s netted Wellington Aracena<\/a> and Cameron Foster<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You could argue that all of the trade packages the Mets sent were just as good as what the Pirates acquired for Bednar. On top of that, you can argue that Bednar is a better late-inning arm than any of them and is more valuable, as they were all rentals. The Pirates traded Bednar while he had an ERA+ of 185 and a K-BB% of 26.6%. He rebounded from a poor 2024 and bad first few weeks of 2025 to put up numbers better than he did in 2021-2023.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just bad for the 2025 trade deadline, either<\/h2>\n

<\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n

Many noteworthy relievers were moved at the 2024 deadline, most of whom got their team’s solid returns. Tanner Scott<\/a>, Jason Adam<\/a>, Carlos Estevez<\/a>, A.J. Puk<\/a>, and even Hunter Harvey<\/a> netted something worthwhile for their respective former clubs. 2023 saw Paul Sewald<\/a> get the Seattle Mariners a two bWAR player in Josh Rojas<\/a>, and rental Aroldis Chapman get the Kansas City Royals a future stud in Cole Ragans<\/a>. In 2022, the Chicago Cubs received Ben Brown<\/a> for David Robertson<\/a>, the Orioles acquired Yennier Cano<\/a> for Jorge Lopez<\/a>, and the Milwaukee Brewers netted Robert Gasser<\/a> for Josh Hader<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And the trade only continues to get worse…<\/h2>\n

We\u2019re well into the 2026 season, and the trade looks bad right now for the Pirates. While Perez is doing well with a .403 wOBA and 123 wRC+ through his first 118 plate appearances of the year, he is still in A-Ball. That\u2019s about all the good to come from the trade for the Pirates in 2026. Flores Jr. has a 29.5% strikeout rate and 77 wRC+ at Triple-A Indianapolis right now. He did appear in seven games in the Major Leagues last year, but struggled in the small sample size. Brian Sanchez owns a poor 41 wRC+ with a K% coming in at an ugly 36.3% mark in 124 plate appearances at High-A Greensboro.<\/p>\n

Bednar has continued to pitch relatively well. His 3.79 ERA doesn\u2019t tell the entire story. He currently holds a strong 2.57 FIP, 2.92 xFIP, 2.57 xERA, and 2.74 SIERA. Opponents cannot make good contact against Bednar. The Renegade currently holds a career-low 86.6 MPH exit velocity and 3.6% barrel rate. Both are above the 80th percentile of batters this year. Bednar is inducing ground balls at an impressive 57.4% rate. Although his K% is down slightly to 25.9%, his 7.1% walk rate is still strong, and his 18.8% K-BB% is only slightly below his career average of 21%.<\/p>\n

When looking at recent trades involving quality high-leverage relievers, the Bednar trade stands out as one of the worst. Most teams have received something of quality at the time, or have developed part of the package they received into a worthwhile player. Neither of these outcomes looks very likely for the Bednar trade as things currently stand. The issues are only compounded by how poorly the Pirates\u2019 bullpen has performed in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Main Image Credit:<\/strong> Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pittsburgh Pirates traded former All-Star David Bednar to the New York Yankees at the 2025 trade deadline. In return, the Pirates received three prospects, including Rafael Flores Jr., Edgleen Perez, and Brian Sanchez. With the Pirates\u2019 bullpen struggling, many have looked back on this trade as one that doomed this bullpen. The David Bednar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5765,"featured_media":122090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"825","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,926,1071,5,26],"tags":[29530,29529,6372,29349],"class_list":["post-122080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-milb","category-mlb","category-yankees","category-pirates","tag-brian-sanchez","tag-edgleen-perez","tag-pittsburg-pirates","tag-rafael-flores-jr"],"modified_by":"Matthew Nethercott, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5765"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122080"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122091,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122080\/revisions\/122091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}