Look — the season isn’t even a month old. Bailey Falter has only made five starts, including Tuesday night’s performance. And one month or five starts does not tell us anything definitive about a starting pitcher. At this point a year ago, Vince Velasquez was looking like an uncovered gem, and Johan Oviedo was pitching like an ace in the making. Oviedo eventually came down to Earth, and Velasquez went down with what turned out to be a season-ending injury shortly thereafter (he is still a free agent).
So I am not ready to make any grand proclamations about Bailey Falter on April 24, other than to say that he has been awfully impressive ever since he allowed that grand slam in the 1st inning of his first game. That brutal inaugural outing in Miami — in which he allowed 5 runs before recording an out — seem to confirm every Pirate fan’s worst fears about having Falter in the rotation over Luis Ortiz or Roansy Contreras. I expected his second start, against Baltimore, to play out like that “Hydrogen Bomb v. Coughing Baby” meme, with the overpowering Orioles offense leaving nothing but a stain on the mound where Falter was pulverized. But it was Falter who was the hydrogen bomb, shutting down the O’s for 6 innings. He followed that eye-opening performance with a couple of decent, 5-inning outings against the Phillies and the Mets, and facing the Brewers on Tuesday he put together his best performance yet: 7 innings, 1 run, 2 walks, 8 strikeouts.
Watching Falter on Tuesday was a surreal experience; he kept throwing low-90s fastballs over the plate, and the Brewers kept swinging through them. In an article for MLB.com, Falter told Alex Stumpf that his extension allows his fastball to play up. He’s right about his extension — it ranks in the 98th percentile in baseball, allowing him to deliver the ball closer to home plate than almost every pitcher in the game — and about his fastball playing up. Falter’s four-seamer is one of the most valuable pitches in the game right now, according to Baseball Savant, and he threw his four-seamer for 60 of his 85 pitches on Tuesday. All 8 of his strikeouts came against the four-seam fastball.
Can he keep it up? I have my doubts. The extension undoubtedly helps, but this is a low-90s fastball we’re talking about. Tuesday was his first big strikeout performance of 2024; prior to facing the Brewers, he was striking out a batter every 2 innings. Falter has a 1.38 ERA since his 1st-inning meltdown and Miami, and I feel safe in predicting that he won’t be pitching at that level throughout the season. The good news, though, is that the Pirates don’t NEED Falter to pitch like a Cy Young contender. This is a guy who started the year as the fifth man in the rotation, and who has been bumped up to fourth (for the time being) by Marco Gonzales’ injury. His performance has been a tremendous help this month, particularly as the the offense has struggled to score runs. Really, all the Pirates need him to do is pitch well enough to keep them in games. Given all he’s shown us this month, I’m getting increasingly confident he can continue to do that going forward, even if he allows a few more runs to score.
Bucco Ball 