ST. LOUIS -- Bubba Chandler remembers being too serious.
The 23-year-old rookie will play table tennis and scour crossword puzzles just hours before his Major League starts, but he wasn’t always like that.
It was 2023, Chandler’s first full season in affiliated baseball. The first two months of the season, he was overly locked in when a friend suggested that he would burn out if he kept the same routine. He then looked at his poor statistics and felt it was time for a change.
“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.”
Chandler’s mellow attitude, mixed with a high standard, took some time to produce successful results in the Majors. August was a defining month for the Pirates' 2021 third-round pick and top pitching prospect.
The flamethrower produced a 3.08 ERA in five starts against some of baseball’s top offenses, including the Dodgers, Brewers and Red Sox. Chandler’s season has turned around since the All-Star break, with a 2.95 ERA in seven starts compared with a 4.77 ERA in 19 starts beforehand.
“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.”
Lately Chandler has felt more like the man. And prosperity is coming at a time he believes is the most difficult. At this point, he explained, consistency triumphs over all and pushes the thought of being tired aside. Everyone is tired, but taking it pitch by pitch is the only way through.
Chandler has always had the stuff, rising to MLB Pipeline’s No. 15 prospect in 2025 for good reason. His fastball consistently reaches 100, and a developed slider landing in the strike zone only makes opposing batters more uncomfortable. The mental side took some time to catch up.
Pitching coach Bill Murphy sees how pitchers handle adversity as the largest component of their success, along with pure stuff. Taking the ball for more than 30 starts will come with ebbs and flows. How Chandler reacts to those ebbs and flows in-game has improved in Murphy’s eyes.
“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 crash-outs, just like many other pitchers, though he waits until he reaches the tunnel to “let it eat.” Chandler turns to other starters, like ace Paul Skenes, as examples: “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 isn’t quite like that, but he has learned when to channel his emotions.
“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.”
Between starts, Chandler journals to keep track of specific details of his arsenal. One anecdote he wrote down recently was about the thumb placement on his slider grip after he felt good about its right-to-left movement while splitting the ball in half. The slider has produced a .218 xBA.
During the recent West Coast trip, Chandler talked in the dugout with both Luke Weaver and Kirby Yates for 30 minutes after the trio had pitched against the Dodgers. Chandler is now producing as expected. He’s attempting not to think too much about it and keep advancements going.
“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.”