The San Diego Padres have been active this offseason. On Dec. 29, they made two big trades, landing right-hander Yu Darvish and catcher Victor Caratini from the Chicago Cubs and left-hander Blake Snell from the Tampa Bay Rays.
Then, on Monday evening, they, the Pirates and the New York Mets agreed to a three-team deal to send Pirates right-hander Joe Musgrove to San Diego, a bevy of prospects to Pittsburgh and left-hander Joey Lucchesi to New York.
With each successive trade, David Bednar watched and waited. The 26-year-old right-hander, a Pittsburgh native and Mars Area High School alum, has spent the last five years clawing his way up the Padres’ organizational ladder, becoming a potential future bullpen arm for them in the process. Basically, he became an attractive candidate for a return in a trade.
When the Pirates were involved on Monday, Bednar — like many others from Pittsburgh — took to Twitter, feverishly refreshing to see the haul of players going back to Pittsburgh.
“I basically kept refreshing Twitter, and eventually saw the names that got leaked, and I just kind of held my breath, because I saw my name on there and was like, ‘Oh, man. This is awesome,’ but didn’t want to get too excited about coming back home and just the opportunity with that until I got the official word today,” Bednar said Tuesday. “Now it still doesn’t quite feel real just because this is an awesome opportunity.”
Bednar’s father, Andy, and his younger brother, Will, found out from text messages, then confirmed it the same way: on Twitter.
And while the homecoming itself is special enough for the Bednars, it shouldn’t overshadow the unlikely journey David has taken to get to this point.
He was lightly recruited out of high school. Andy, who was Mars’ head baseball coach for years before retiring in 2019, remembers most players committing to colleges long before David, who didn’t commit to Lafayette College in Easton, Penn., until Hallloween of his senior year.
Bednar continued to improve, though, eventually becoming a 35th-round pick of the Padres after his junior season at Lafayette in 2016. It was the realization of a dream, but the reality of 35th-round picks isn’t very good.
The late rounds of the MLB Draft often include seemingly throw-away picks. Sometimes teams will take college quarterbacks who once played baseball, for example. Basically, there aren’t high expectations for anyone selected that late.
The Bednars knew that, too, but it was the dream.
“Obviously you always have those doubts, especially being in the 35th round. Seeing the first couple round guys, it’s easy to get caught up in that, but what really helped me and what the Padres did a good job of is it really didn’t matter what round you’re drafted in,” David said. “If you performed, you were able to move up, and it’s pretty easy for them to say that, but me being a later round draft pick, I was given every opportunity to succeed and just kind of keep throwing.”
Added Will, a sophomore right-hander at Mississippi State: “I think at the beginning, we were all just really excited that he got drafted, and then we were actually out to visit him when he got called up to [Class-A Fort Wayne], and he was the first person in his draft class to get called up that year, and it was kind of around then that we started to realize, ‘Hey, he’s making some progressions. This is pretty possible.’ ”
During David’s time in Fort Wayne, the Bednars consistently made the five-hour drive from Pittsburgh to Fort Wayne to watch the eldest son play. They went and saw him in California with the Class-A+ Lake Elsinore.
Along the way, the competition got better, and Bednar kept dealing out of the bullpen. There wasn’t a single full season in the minors in which he had an ERA higher than 2.95.
“He has his routines, and one of the things that he does really well, and his dad doesn’t handle real well is the ups and downs of a relief pitcher,” Andy said. “Sometimes you throw really well, and you’re on cloud nine, and then the next time out you might give up a run or something like that. He really does a great job of keeping that even keel, and at that profession, you have to have that, that innate sense about you to be able to do something like that.”
Eventually that resulted in a promotion to the major leagues, making Bednar just the eighth pitcher taken in the 35th round to ever play in the majors.
There, he finally did struggle a bit, allowing 13 runs in 17.1 innings, with a WHIP of 1.615 in 2019 and 2020. In 2021, he will certainly be trying to correct that.
Bednar recognizes that, as exciting as the homecoming may be, it’s important to focus on that task at hand. General manager Ben Cherington said Tuesday that he expects Bednar to compete for a bullpen spot on the Pirates’ opening day roster in spring training, but nothing is guaranteed.
The long-shot Bednar knows that fact as well as anyone.
“I’m going to take the next couple days and just kind of soak this all in and be excited and everything,” Bednar said. “But at the end of the day, once spring training comes, it’s all about getting outs and going to compete for a job and I still have to prove myself. So, really, going out there, the goal doesn’t really change. Coming into camp guns blazing, trying to win a job.”
Andy jokes that the move is a positive, if for no other reason than it will allow him to watch his son’s games on local television channels rather than the MLB or MiLB TV packages he’d been using in past years.
Of course, in reality, the goal is still the same: make it in the majors and stay there. He tasted it in San Diego. The only difference now is that he gets to try to do it for his hometown Pirates.
“He’s going to the team that he’s been rooting for when he was growing up, so it’s definitely kind of like a surreal moment,” Will said. “Like, hey, he’s going to the hometown team, that’s pretty cool.”
Mike Persak: mpersak@post-gazette.com and Twitter @MikeDPersak
First Published: January 20, 2021, 6:24 p.m.