Article: Brennan Bernardino's Early Success Is Thanks To A Single Pitch

[Nick John]

One of the best pitchers in the Red Sox's bullpen this season has evolved into a dominant southpaw thanks to the addition of one common pitch.

The Boston Red Sox may have helped Brennan Bernardino become a pitcher with a higher ceiling than just a low-leverage reliever. The change in the left-hander has been noticeable through a small sample size to begin the season, but you can’t help but look at his transformation and wonder if this is his new potential.

After a rough 2024 season that saw Bernardino open the year in Triple-A, the southpaw worked over the offseason on improving not just his current pitches, but also to reshape one that would help him become more dependable against right-handed batters. In his career, Bernardino has been rather dominant against left-handed batters, but when facing right-handed batters, his numbers become rather pedestrian.

Right-handers have a career .276/.375/.404 stat line against him in 106 career games, a problematic stat line compared to his numbers against same-sided hitters. In 2024, right-handed batters hit better than his career numbers, managing a .284 batting average across 50 games.

After the season, Bernardino was viewed by fans as a potential 40-man roster casualty. It had been his worst season in Boston, appearing in 57 games with a 4.06 ERA across 51 innings. He had allowed six home runs and walked 22 batters while striking out 56, all getting worse from his 2023 season. Add to it that the Red Sox had other left-handed pitchers they had signed in Aroldis Chapman and Justin Wilson, and he became viewed as expandable.

Bernardino, however, used this to motivate himself and harness a pitch he hadn’t used in quite some time: a changeup. The left-hander never threw the changeup once in 2024 and only threw it 12 times in 2023.

The changeup has been a wonderful addition to Bernardino’s arsenal, as it now gives him a pitch to use against right-handed batters that will break away from them. With the addition of the changeup, Bernardino has also seen a slight change in his pitch usage compared to 2024.

During the 2024 season, Bernardino relied heavily on a two-pitch combination of his sinker and curveball, as he threw them 82% of the time. The remaining 18% were made up from his cutter and slider, though that has changed in 2025. His pitch usage has evened out, with his new changeup being his most thrown pitch at a 29% usage rate. It’s followed by his sinker at 27%, his cutter at 24%, his curveball at 18%, and his slider, which has only been thrown for 2% of his pitches.

And while it is early in the season, Bernardino has seen improvements early on. Through his first seven games pitched, he’s managed to throw 8 1/3 innings, striking out seven hitters and having walked only one (intentionally). He’s allowed a home run, but his ERA is currently 2.16, and more importantly his WHIP is incredibly low at 0.600 thanks to the low number of hits he’s allowed early into the season.

What's most important is that right-handers have struggled against Bernardino, as they’ve gone 2-for-18 against him, good for a slash line of .111/.105/.167 with five strikeouts. Batters are making good contact less often, as his barrel percentage has dropped to 5.6% on the season, along with his exit velocity dropping to 85.7 mph.

The changeup has been thrown 28 times so far (only to righties), and hitters are 0-for-10 on the season against with a whiff rate of 41.2%.

Reintegrating his changeup into his pitch arsenal may have allowed Bernardino to remain with the Red Sox and become something more than he's previously shown. If he can keep up this level of pitching, the Red Sox may have a deeper bullpen than many first thought.

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[moonslav59]

Bernardino was really good for us for the end of 2023 and start of 2024. Let's hope he can do that for a full season.

[Nick John]

5 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

Bernardino was really good for us for the end of 2023 and start of 2024. Let's hope he can do that for a full season.

I'd like to think Bernardino's issues in 2024 were from over usage. Especially once right-handers got to see him a lot more as before the changeup, his pitches mostly broke towards a right handed batter and couldn't really get him to chase anything off the outer half of the plate unless he tried to backdoor stuff. 

[moonslav59]

45 minutes ago, Nick John said:

I'd like to think Bernardino's issues in 2024 were from over usage. Especially once right-handers got to see him a lot more as before the changeup, his pitches mostly broke towards a right handed batter and couldn't really get him to chase anything off the outer half of the plate unless he tried to backdoor stuff. 

You could be right. When you pitch more than 1 IP, like he did in 9 of his first 22 outings, it's hard to gauge what is overuse.

Pre- All Star game, he pitched in 33 games in 96 days. He pitched back-to-back days 5 times with only one time involving going into the second inning in one of those games.

He had 8 days off then 5 off before his first meltdown game right after the AS break. He fell apart on July 19th and never really recovered.

8.05 ERA and 6.48 FIP

He was shut down on SEP 10. He did have a 4 game stretch before that SEP 10 game (3 IP 1 H 0BB 3K and 0ER.)