Bucs agree to deal with southpaw Andrew Heaney (source)

BRADENTON, Fla. -- The Pirates are banking on their starting rotation being the strength of their team in 2025, and they deepened that starting five Thursday when they inked free-agent starter Andrew Heaney to a one-year, $5.25 million contract with incentives, according to a source.

The deal is pending a physical and has not been confirmed by the club.

Heaney, who is entering his 12th Major League season, went 5-14 with a 4.28 ERA over 32 games (31 starts) and 160 innings with Texas last season. The 33-year-old southpaw made 34 appearances (28 starts) for the 2023 World Series champion Rangers. He also is a two-time nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award.

Heaney has five pitches in his repertoire, but he primarily uses his four-seam fastball, slider and changeup. He¡¯s used his slider more in recent seasons, a pitch that induces a healthy 36.5% whiff rate. Heaney's four-seamer averaged 91.5 mph and 15.7 inches of vertical break last season -- 5.5 inches more than the expected average. His changeup also gets good horizontal movement and has a similar movement profile to his fastball, but is, obviously, much slower (83.7 mph).

A curveball and two-seamer round out Heaney's pitch mix, but he threw those pitches just 5% of the time last season. The curveball used to be his primary breaking ball, but he swapped it out for the slider in 2022.

Heaney has been a roughly league average starter for most of his career (51-62, 4.45 ERA, 94 ERA+), relying on control and not walking too many batters -- as evidenced by his 5.9% walk rate in 2024. Unlike many southpaws of his ilk, he does get his fair share of strikeouts, too, punching out 159 last season to go with a 22.9% strikeout rate. The only other left-handers with at least 150 strikeouts each of the past two seasons are Yusei Kikuchi, Framber Valdez and MacKenzie Gore.

Heaney has been prone to the long ball in his career. He¡¯s allowed 89 home runs since 2021 -- including 23 last season -- and his rate of 1.6 home runs per nine innings is the ninth highest of any pitcher with at least 500 innings pitched in that stretch.

The Pirates have a good track record with veteran left-handed starting pitchers -- including jumpstarting mid-career revivals of Tyler Anderson and Jos¨¦ Quintana -- and their home ballpark plays a part in that success. PNC Park has a cavernous left-center notch, which usually helps southpaws against right-handed hitters. Of the 23 home runs allowed by Heaney last season, Baseball Savant projects that only 18 would have been gone at PNC Park. Going back to 2021, only 74 of the 89 home runs he's allowed would have been a homer in Pittsburgh.

Heaney is joining what is shaping up to be one of the best rotations in the National League, headed by Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller and Jared Jones. Heaney will join that group, but that leaves a question of who will be the fifth starter. Johan Oviedo is coming back from Tommy John surgery, and while he has thrown on the back fields at Pirate City, his progress is currently behind the other pitchers in camp. Bailey Falter went 8-9 with a 4.43 ERA over 28 starts last season, his first full campaign in the Majors. Free-agent left-hander Caleb Ferguson signed with the intention to get a look as a starter as well, though he¡¯s been a reliever for nearly all of his Major League career.

The Pirates also have three of their top six prospects in Major League camp: Bubba Chandler (No. 15 overall, per MLB Pipeline), Thomas Harrington (No. 80) and Braxton Ashcraft. All three figure to be on the Major League radar this year after finishing last season with Triple-A Indianapolis.

Pittsburgh¡¯s 40-man roster is full, so a corresponding move will need to be made to add Heaney. The Pirates¡¯ first Spring Training game is Saturday against the Orioles.