3 Pirates who've rebounded to finish the 2024 season strong

This story was excerpted from Alex Stumpf's Pirates Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

To borrow an Andy Haines-ism, it takes a long time to have a good season, and it takes a long time to have a bad season. If you start the season strong, great. Don’t rest on your laurels. And if you start slow, well, there’s plenty of time to rebound.

With that bit of wisdom from the hitting coach as inspiration, let’s take a look at three Pirates who started their season on the wrong foot but are finishing strong.

1) Jared Triolo
Triolo earned the second-base job out of Spring Training but spent a good portion of this season as a utilityman or bench player after struggling offensively. He’s really picked it up at the plate of late though, going from batting below the Mendoza line to slashing .274/.390/.464 with four home runs from Aug. 17-Sept. 16, a month-long stretch in which he’s been the regular third baseman with Ke’Bryan Hayes on the injured list.

It’s around that time frame when Triolo made a change in his mechanics, lowering his hands. As a result, he’s drastically cut down on his groundball rate (46.7 percent before Aug. 17 to 28.3 percent since) and is hitting more line drives.

“He's in a stronger position to drive the ball,” said manager Derek Shelton recently. “I think we've seen it.”

Triolo made a change in his mechanics late last season which also led to a big month of September. We’ll have to see if the new hand placement will play in 2025 as well, but a strong finish is important for any young player -- and for a club that’s going to spend an offseason determining where some of its young players might fit into next year’s team.

2) Yasmani Grandal
Grandal has seen a dip in playing time of late with starter Joey Bart healthy. He’s certainly making the most of his more limited opportunities, hitting .300 with three home runs, 15 walks and a .940 OPS over his first 77 plate appearances since the calendar turned to August.

Grandal shared that his 3-year-old son, Rhyatt, had been telling him to hit homers, which was the cause for his power surge. No word on if Rhyatt also told him to own the strike zone, because Grandal has been much more selective at the plate. That has translated to him chasing out of the zone less often, which has led to the extra walks -- a huge part of his on-base percentage and offensive upside:

This year didn’t start the way Grandal wanted, with him spending the first month of the season on the injured list and struggling to get up to game speed without Spring Training reps, but he’s finishing strong and has improved on his numbers from last year. Grandal’s future with the club may be a little murky considering the other internal catching options the Pirates will have in 2025, but a good showing late for the veteran catcher is definitely a boost.

3) Dennis Santana
In fairness to Santana, he’s been on a roll for quite some time, but he’s hit another gear of late, tossing 19 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings and 16 straight outings with zero runs and one hit or fewer (though his scoreless streak ended Tuesday). He’s the only Pirate to accomplish the latter feat in the Modern Era, according to StatsPerform.

Not bad for someone who wasn’t even a Pirate to start the year and was claimed off waivers in mid-June.

So much of that success lies with his slider. Since the start of July through Monday, hitters struck out 20 times against the pitch and hit just .164 against it. He’s using it more, throwing it 25.8 percent of the time with the Yankees to 37.9 percent with the Pirates. Santana also leaned much more into his four-seamer than his sinker, which is translating to more whiffs at the top of the zone. He's getting a ton of chases with his slider, with most of his whiffs on it being strike-to-ball chases that run away from right-handed hitters:

Santana ranks in the 98th percentile of pitchers in chase rate (35.8 percent), which has led to a lot of whiffs and soft contact (94th percentile with an 86.3 mph average exit velocity). That’s incredibly important, and while Shelton champions his slider and cutter as a win for the pitching and development teams, he also knows Santana is solid between the ears.

“There's not a lot that ruffles him,” Shelton said. “He's pretty calm. I think because of it, his ability to adjust, change and learn and then the calmness about him is why he's garnered some success."