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BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2015		Erik Bedard has thrown nearly 500 above-replacement innings after labrum surgery, a testament to medicine and to him; he can probably keep filling the "hold down a starting spot until a better option becomes available" role as long as he feels like it.
2014		Bedard was an effective starting pitcher in 2013, except when he wasn’t. Unfortunately, that was often: He failed to make it through five innings in eight of his 26 starts. One particular start against Oakland badly skewed his stats, as he allowed six earned runs and recorded just a single out. So while he pitched better than his record, the ravages of age have taken their toll on his stuff. This showed in the component numbers: His walks were up and his strikeouts were down over the previous season—you know, the year he got released by the Pirates?—but at least Bedard can hang his hat on his first 150-inning season since his 2007 heyday.
2013		Pittsburgh’s decision to sign Bedard to a one-year deal looked smart for a while. Through his first six starts, he had a 2.65 ERA and 23 more strikeouts than walks. He left his seventh start with back spasms, returned a week later, and saw everything fall apart. In Bedard’s final 17 starts, he allowed more than six runs per nine innings. Pittsburgh decided to move on at the end of August.
2012		Bedard’s knee, not his shoulder, gave him trouble in 2011. He still mustered 129 innings—129 more than he did in 2010—and showed that his fastball-curveball combination can work, provided that he has his good command. The Pirates signed Bedard with the hope that he can be the legitimate strikeout artist lacking from their rotation since Oliver Perez. A move to the National League for the first time in his career should help. But this is Bedard, so like always, health will be the determinant.
2011		The good-when-healthy act that characterized Bedard’s first two tours of duty in the Pacific Northwest raised hopes for his third installment, but the Canadian couldn’t complete the trilogy in 2010, as the “when healthy” portion of his season-long sojourn on the 60-day DL comprised all of three minor-league rehab starts in late June and early July. The lefty’s shoulder pain recurred just as he stood poised to make his major-league debut, and after soliciting three opinions in a vain attempt to find a doctor who would give him good news, he extended his streak of consecutive seasons with a shoulder surgery to three in early August. The latest operation turned up only a bone spur, a far less serious finding than the torn labrum that had sent him under the knife a year earlier, and Bedard insists that he’ll be ready to take the mound in spring training. If you believe that, his agent has an incentive-laden contract to sell you.
2010		Before re-injuring himself last summer, Bedard had at least improved his strikeout rate nearly all the way back up to where it was in 2007. No one doubts his talent, but a torn labrum is a tough injury to come back from. He probably won't be ready for Opening Day, and the team that signs him will tacitly take on a big risk, both to the good and the bad. In mint condition, Bedard is one of the better pitchers in the game, but it's not clear if that version of the southpaw still exists, and nobody's going to repeat a Bavasi-big mistake in offering the sun, moon, and stars to land the lefty. Handled carefully, he could be the perfect add-on for a contending team that doesn't need him immediately, especially if he'll agree to an incentive-laden deal.
2009		Bedard didn't pitch nearly often or effectively enough last season to justify the Mariners' decision to part with a substantial package of young talent in order to acquire him. He was plagued by a sore shoulder, which ended his season after an outing on July 4th, and averaged just over five innings per start. When he was on the mound, Bedard was Seattle's second-best starter by a wide margin, but his peripherals paled in comparison to those of his 2007 campaign, when he recorded one of the best strikeout rates in AL history. His durability and willingness to pitch through minor pain and fatigue have been questioned throughout his career, and drew added scrutiny after exploratory surgery on his shoulder last September revealed only minor structural damage.
2008		Bedard missed all of September with a strained oblique muscle. In the great "what-if" game, we're talking about five starts, maybe six, which could have bumped Bedard's season totals up to, say, a 15-6 record and a majors-leading 260 strikeouts, still not quite enough to pry the Cy Young award away from C.C. Sabathia. The only reason not to think of Bedard as a favorite for the 2008 Cy Young is the lack of support he's likely to get from the Orioles. Amazingly, he's been mentioned in trade talks; it should take a truly extraordinary package of players to get him.
2007		Bedard is one of the best pitchers in the majors right now. In terms of rate stats, he basically repeated his very good 2005 last year, but what made 2006 even better was that he stayed healthy, throwing more than 150 innings for the first time in his professional career. Staying healthy is a skill; now that Bedard has done it once, the chances of his doing it again are better. Even so, the odds still favor more injury time. Another encouraging sign was that Bedard got better as the season went on, perhaps having shaken off some World Baseball Classic fatigue.
2006		Bedard was on his way to a spectacular season when he sprained his knee in May. What was supposed to be a minimal 15-day stay on the DL dragged on for eight weeks. Somewhere in there, Bedard lost his release point and never recovered it. Following his return, his walk rate more than doubled, his hit rate jumped, and things just kept getting worse the longer the season went on. His stuff is undeniably good, but his control and his inability to stay healthy have held him back.
2005		Judging solely by how he'd pitched before, 2004 wasn't so good for Bedard: He was far more hittable and wilder than normal, and consequently gave up a lot more runs. Considering that it was his first active duty since having Tommy John surgery, and that he was able to strike opposing batters out at an above-average rate, the results were actually pretty decent. Durability is still a big concern—last year's 137 innings is his professional best for a season—and he needs control to be the great pitcher that's within his realm of the possible. The Orioles did a good job of protecting him from over work, but it will be interesting to see if they let him work deeper into games this season.
2004		Bedard had Tommy John surgery in September of 2002, and was able to rehab and get in a few minor league starts just before the season ended. His rehab apparently went well: His fastball was reportedly back its to full 92-93-mph speed, and he was surprised to find that he still had a feel for his curveball-a good thing, because it was his best pitch. While he's been an outstanding pitcher throughout his pro career, he's been exceptionally dominant against left-handed hitters. In a couple of years, the O's could have a mighty interesting core of young starters between Ainsworth, Batista, Bedard, and Riley.
2003		Oriole medicine, part 2 (see David Segui for part 1). Bedard was, without a doubt, the best pitcher in the Oriole system at the start of 2002: left-handed, with an above-average fastball, a better curve, totally and completely unhittable by left-handed hitters (who were 2–37 against him in 2002). So the Orioles bring him to major league camp, and leave him there until mid-March, at which point he’s thrown just 11 competitive innings. He starts the season on a 50-pitch limit, 25 behind the other Bowie starters. But no problem, he is just as dominating as ever, and even gets a quick little call-up to Baltimore. Still, he’s tearing up the league, up until June 26. On that day, throwing a two-hitter, he went out for the eighth inning, even though he had already reached his pitch count. The manager thought it was just so much fun, and then pop goes the elbow. The MRI showed that he had a partially torn ligament. The Orioles’ medical staff prescribed rest, hoping that the tear would heal on its own. Six weeks later, without taking another MRI to see if it had healed at all, they had Bedard resume throwing. The very next day, the pain was back, and Bedard was heading for surgery. He won’t pitch in 2003; he’s unlikely to be effective until the second half of 2004, if then. As you can see, that’s a shame.
2002		A big-time prospect whose name people don't yet know, Bedard came from a Canadian high school with no baseball team. He then had to walk on to a community college team, so he is quite inexperienced for his age. He allowed just 27 runs in 17 starts, with 13 of those runs coming in back-to-back disasters. His pitches have a lot of movement, breaking in on and destroying left-handed hitters. He missed six weeks with tendinitis, then pitched well at Frederick and in the Arizona Fall League.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, Erik Bedard threw 12,116 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2007 and 2014, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2014, he relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (89mph) and Curve (75mph), also mixing in a Sinker (89mph), Slider (74mph) and Cutter (85mph). He also rarely threw a Change (79mph) and Splitter (83mph).