North Shore Nine

The Pittsburgh Pirates have finalized a deal that brings journeyman reliever Ben Heller into the fold on a minor-league contract. This certainly isn’t one of the major acquisitions that Pirates fans have been eagerly awaiting during the Winter Meetings, but it is a move that could end up bolstering the bullpen for the 2024 season. Assuming that Heller is able to stay healthy, that is. Injuries have plagued him throughout his career.

Once a fairly well-regarded bullpen prospect who went from Cleveland to the Bronx (alongside Clint Frazier, Justus Sheffield, J.P. Feyereisen) in the 2016 Andrew Miller trade, Heller has seen his career decimated by injuries. From 2018-22, Heller dealt with bone spurs in his pitching elbow (2018), underwent Tommy John surgery (2019) and was plagued by a nerve injury in his right biceps (2020-21). He was limited to just 35 2/3 innings between the big leagues and minors combined during that brutal stretch of health woes.

When he’s been healthy enough to pitch in the majors, Heller has been quite effective. He touts a career 3.06 ERA in 50 frames, albeit with suboptimal strikeout and walk rates of 20.9% and 11.8%, respectively. While he was working to rehab all those injuries, Heller restored some zip on his fastball; he flashed a 96.2 mph average as a rookie in 2016 before dipping to 94 mph in 2017-20. He was back up to 95.9 mph on his seldom-used four-seamer with Atlanta this past year, however, and averaged 94.9 mph on his newly implemented sinker.

While this isn’t a major addition, there is some intrigue to be gleaned from this signing. It is not without red flags, however. The biggest red flag is that Ben Heller is 32 years old and has only thrown 50 major league innings. Back to the intriguing part, though, through those 50 innings, he has a respectable 3.06 ERA with 46 strikeouts and issuing 26 free passes. When he’s been healthy and had big-league opportunities, he’s done fairly well.

His major-league experience has come with the New York Yankees where he saw action in 31 games spanning four seasons. Last season was the first season where he was healthy throughout and he saw action in 19 MLB games with the Atlanta Braves. The upside here is that if Heller is able to secure a spot on the major-league roster, the team would have control of him for three seasons through arbitration. This is a bit of a lottery ticket kind of signing, but there is a chance it could pay dividends.

The bullpen for the 2024 season will consist of David Bednar, Colin Holderman, Carmen Mlodzinski, Dauri Moreta, and Ryan Borucki. There are players currently in the system who will be competing for the remaining spots, and now Ben Heller will be throwing his hat into the ring. We’ll see how this goes come spring.