Bubba Chandler’s best month in the majors didn’t come from turning into a different pitcher. It came from learning how to be the same guy, just calmer.
The 23-year-old Pirates rookie has found a rhythm that fits him now: table tennis, crossword puzzles and a loose approach in the hours before he takes the mound. That wasn’t always the case.
Back in 2023, during his first full season in affiliated baseball, Chandler spent the first two months of the year too wound up. A friend eventually told him he’d burn out if he kept operating that way, and Chandler knew the numbers backed up the warning.
“After that, it was more like, ‘All right, how can I show up every day and do what I need to do, but stay loose?’” Chandler told MLB.com from the visitors’ dugout at Busch Stadium after a throwing session.
“... If you're just a guy that's just trying to keep it loose, [if] you sometimes act like a jackass, that's OK.”
That mindset has started to pay off in a big way. August was the breakout stretch for the Pirates’ 2021 third-round pick and top pitching prospect, who posted a 3.08 ERA in five starts against some of baseball’s toughest lineups, including the Dodgers, Brewers and Red Sox. Since the All-Star break, Chandler has logged a 2.95 ERA in seven starts, a clear jump from the 4.77 ERA he carried through his first 19 starts.
“The game is so results-based. That's how every sport is,” Chandler said. “When you pitch good, you feel like the man, and when you pitch bad, it's like your life's over.”
Right now, Chandler feels like the man. And he’s doing it in what he believes is the hardest part of the job: staying consistent when fatigue is unavoidable and every outing demands a fresh reset. For him, the answer is simple enough to say and hard enough to live - take it pitch by pitch and don’t let tired legs or a bad moment take over.
The raw ingredients have always been there. Chandler has climbed to MLB Pipeline’s No. 15 prospect in 2025 because of the kind of arm that can blow hitters away, with a fastball that regularly touches 100 and a slider that becomes even more dangerous when it lands in the strike zone. The adjustment has been on the mental side, where the game can chew up young starters if they let one mistake spill into the next.
Pitching coach Bill Murphy pointed to that ability to handle adversity as a major separator, right alongside pure stuff. For starters who take the ball more than 30 times, the season is full of swings, and Chandler’s response to those swings has gotten better.
“I think at the beginning of the year, when maybe something didn't go his way or he didn't make a pitch he thought he should have made, it affected him a little bit, and that happens a ton with young starting pitchers at the Major League level, because this game is tough,” Murphy said. “He has done a fantastic job of being able to move from pitch to pitch and not let one affect the other.”
Chandler still has his blowups, like plenty of pitchers do, but he saves them for later. Once he gets to the tunnel, he can “let it eat.” He also studies pitchers who have mastered that kind of control, including ace Paul Skenes.
“When you watch him on the mound, you'd have no idea if he had a perfect game or if he had given up 10 runs.”
Chandler said he’s not built exactly that way, but he has figured out how to keep his emotions from spilling where everyone can see them.
“I'm not a robot. … If I'm out on the mound acting like a [fool], the opposing team, the dugout sees that, and they feel that, and now hitters have a little bit extra confidence and they go, ‘All right, we got him,’” Chandler said.
“While you're on the field, [you] try to be as poker-faced as you can.”
He keeps notes between starts, too, journaling details about his arsenal. One recent entry focused on his thumb placement on his slider grip after he liked the way the pitch moved right to left while splitting the ball in half. That slider has held hitters to a .218 xBA.
On the recent West Coast trip, Chandler also spent about 30 minutes talking in the dugout with Luke Weaver and Kirby Yates after they all pitched against the Dodgers. He’s delivering the kind of results expected of him now, and he’s trying not to overthink the progress.
“Since May, it's just gotten better, and the focus has got a lot more tunnel vision,” he said. “The stuff around me, I don't let it affect me, whether there's a bloop hit or an error, something that I can't control. Forget about it and move on to the next thing.”
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