With His Hot Start, Bryan Reynolds May Be Hitting His Way Out of Pittsburgh

Oneil Cruz’s fractured fibula is the biggest story surrounding the Pirates. On the positive side, the return of Andrew McCutchen to the fold is neat, and Tuesday night’s walk-off home run by Ji Hwan Bae was pretty cool. To these eyes, however, the most noteworthy thing about Pittsburgh thus far — even beyond the fact that the team’s 7–4 start is its best since 2018 — has been the torrid play of Bryan Reynolds. The 28-year-old outfielder has been the one of the game’s hottest hitters, and he’s done it as progress toward a contract extension has ground to a halt just when it seemed that a deal to keep him in black and gold was within reach.

Reynolds ended last weekend as one of seven players who had collected hits in every game this season (José Abreu, José Ramírez, Nolan Arenado, Randy Arozarena, Bryson Stott, and Jordan Walker were the others). He and Abreu both went hitless in Monday night’s Pirates-Astros contest, and by the close of play Tuesday, only the streaks of Stott and Walker remained intact. Still, season-opening hitting streaks come and go pretty quickly; of more interest is that Reynolds has been putting up eye-opening numbers. Through Tuesday, he’s hitting .356/.367/.778, leading the NL in slugging percentage and homers (five) and ranking fifth in WAR (0.7) and wRC+ (184). Mind you, those numbers looked even more impressive before his 1-for-8 on Monday and Tuesday nights, but the sudden itch to write about Adam Duvall, an even hotter hitter in this young season, going down with a wrist injury got in my way.

For Duvall, Reynolds, and everyone else, we’re still in Small Sample Theater territory, but as with the Red Sox slugger, some underlying numbers have me wondering if we’re seeing real improvements to his game. For starters, like Duvall, he’s cut his strikeout rate dramatically: Last year he struck out 23% of the time, and for his career he’s at 21.5%, but this year, that’s down to 10.2%. Given that strikeout rates stabilize around 60 PA and that Reynolds is at 49, this could wind up being noteworthy, though unlike Duvall, his swinging-strike rate hasn’t fallen quite so dramatically, going from 12.9% last year to 11.9% this year. His 31.1% chase rate is down 4.5 points from last year, when he tried to hack his way out of a slow start, and is just half a point lower than his career mark, but even so, he’s walking in just 4.1% of his plate appearances, less than half of his 9.7% career mark.

All of this translates to more contact than usual for Reynolds, and he’s making the most of it. Seriously: He’s hitting the ball in the air much more than ever, and his average exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate are beyond anything in the Bryan Reynolds catalogue.

Again, we’re not yet at the point of these stats stabilizing; via Baseball Prospectus’ Russell Carleton (whom I command you to read), exit velocity stabilizes around 40 batted ball events and barrel rate at 50 BBE, and groundball, fly ball, and hard-hit rates do so at 80 BBE. But even if Reynolds, who leads the majors with 12 barrels, didn’t add another one over his next eight batted balls, his 24% barrel rate would be higher than every qualified 2022 hitter other than Aaron Judge. As it is, his 28.6% barrel rate is fifth among current qualifiers, and his .896 xSLG and .553 xwOBA both lead the majors:

Here’s where Reynolds is in terms of rolling xSLG:

The question underlying all of this is whether Reynolds’ hot start is a demonstration that he can get back to approximating his 2021 form, when he hit .302/.390/.522 for a 141 wRC+ and was worth 6.2 WAR, or whether last year’s good-not-great .262/.345/.461 (125 wRC+) and 2.8 WAR is the new norm. That question obviously has ramifications when it comes to his future, whether it’s in Pittsburgh or elsewhere.

Recall that in December, Reynolds, who has two remaining years of club control after this season, requested a trade after the Pirates reportedly offered him a six-year, $80 million extension, over $50 million short of the eight-year, $134 million deal he was seeking. Dan Szymborski recapped all of that in February and provided a six-year ZiPS projection for 2024–29: $95 million, a figure weighed down by Reynolds’ three remaining arbitration years (including this one), the fact that he’ll be heading into his age-31 season as a free agent, and his subpar defensive metrics (he had -14 DRS, -6 RAA, and -2.7 UZR as a center fielder last year). Dan also noted that limiting the defensive input to RAA as a center fielder added another $25 million to his projected value over that span, pushing his valuation into the ballpark of what Reynolds sought.

Just before the regular season began, the two sides drew closer to an eight-year, $106.75 million deal — that was including his $6.75 million salaries for 2023 and ’24 — but hit a snag over Reynolds’ desire for an opt-out clause after the fourth year (2026), meaning that the Pirates would gain only one more year of control if he were to exercise that option. With the soft deadline of Opening Day now having passed, that’s as far the conversation has gone. “Nothing to report… If there’s anything more to talk about, we’ll keep that between him and us.” said general manager Ben Cherington on Wednesday when asked if talks had progressed or broken off.

Reynolds is tearing the cover off the ball and also playing left field about twice as often as center (65 innings in the former, 32 in the latter so far). His ZiPS rest-of-season projection for 3.5 WAR would put him at a total of 4.2, a little below the halfway point between his last two seasons but closer to All-Star caliber, that while playing for just $6.75 million. Here’s a look at his preseason ZiPS percentile projection, based on 622 PA:

Given the boost of his hot start, Reynolds could be headed toward something between his 60th and 70th percentiles; my back-of-the-envelope math puts him at a 137 wRC+ including his rest-of-season ZiPS. Landing somewhere in there would obviously make for a rosier long-term projection.

All of which is to say that both Reynolds’ stock and his price tag are currently on the rise thanks to this hot start, and while there are certainly teams out there eager to meet his long-term financial desires, the Pirates’ willingness to get to his level is in question; their track record in such matters is certainly worthy of skepticism even given how close the two sides appear to be. If this current opportunity passes without a deal coming together, Reynolds may well be hitting himself out of Pittsburgh, just at a time the team is showing signs of life.