The big thing with Bedard is the strikeout. He is striking out 9.79 batters per nine innings. That's ridiculous, especially for a guy with the kind of stuff that Bedard has. Don't get me wrong, he's a really good pitcher, but he doesn't have THAT good of stuff. I think a more realistic number for him there is between seven and eight.
Bedard has been walking more batters that he usually does. His 3.71 BB/9 right now is lower than his career average of 3.53, but it's not so far off that it really means much. We'd like to see him walk less, but with the strikeouts he's getting you can deal with it.
Here's the batted ball numbers for Bedard's career, compliments of FanGraphs.com, click on it to make it bigger (that's what she said).
You can see that Bedard is getting a lot less ground balls than what he has in his career. The increased strikeouts factor in there to an extend, but the difference is pretty substantial. His fly ball numbers are pretty much right on track with his career averages, which is a good thing. You'd like to see your pitchers get more ground balls than fly balls, but like I've said before, if you're getting a bunch of strikeouts you can put up with some unfavorable numbers in the rest of these categories.
Another number that is up is his line drive percentage. That's up 5.8 percent from his career average. His infield fly balls are up as well, which pretty much shows the opposite of the line drive percentage (in the sense that line drives are squared up on the bat and infield popups are hitting the very top of the barrel).
Bedard has also been fortunate in the home run category. He has surrendered just one long ball in his 34 innings of work. That has him at a 3.0% HR/FB rating, which is really low. His career average is 8.8, so if he gravitates towards that you're going to see more of those long fly balls go over the fence. However, he is pitching in a more friendly ballpark for a left handed pitcher. That north side notch should save him a home run or two this year, so that number might not be coming up as much as you might think.
One extremely striking thing is Bedard's .355 BABIP. His career average in that category is .311 which means he's been very unlucky with the balls that have been put in play against him. More of those should start going for outs which makes him look even better going forward.
None of this good news is a huge surprise. Bedard has always been a very good pitcher when healthy. So far he's stayed 100% and that's all we can really ask for. If he can stay off the shelf he should be an extremely effective pitcher for the Pirates.