Astros look to finish off Indians
As free agency looms, veteran Keuchel reflects on roller-coaster ride with teammates, franchise By Chandler Rome STAFF WRITER
CLEVELAND — Before he grew the beard and befriended a city, Dallas Keuchel drudged in the darkest days of Astros history. He was a homegrown holdover from a losing era, among the prospects playing for a job while a new regime orchestrated a teardown.
Cleaning his locker on Sept. 30 became a rite of passage, even as signs of an organizational turnaround were palpable. The hollow feeling of spectating while 10 eight other teams chase a World Series title doesn’t fade. Nor does beginning your major league career on two teams that lost 100 games.
All who remain from those torturous 2012 and 2013 seasons — Keuchel, Jose Altuve and Marwin Gonzalez — concur. Talk to any of them during this golden age, and each is quick to lend it the proper perspective only they can share.
“I’m just trying to enjoy myself as much as possible,” Keuchel said Sunday, “because I know how short this ride can be. But how long it also could be as well.”
Monday afternoon at Progressive Field, in perhaps his final month with the franchise, Keuchel can pitch the organization to the sixth League Championship Series of its 57-year history.
Free agency looms for the 30-year-old lefthander, uncertainty he acknowledges has lent more purpose to his seventh season in Houston.
“This season has been more meaningful, I think, just because it could potentially be my last,” Keuchel said Sunday. “I’ve never taken for granted anything to this point with the Astros or my own career. You start to cherish the little things when, potentially, it could be ... you could be in a different spot next year.”
Keuchel has grown from a middling seventh-round selection in an otherwise doomed 2009 draft class — six of the Astros’ 51 picks played in a major league game — to a Cy Young winner and unquestioned ace of a wild card-winning club.
Compartmentalizing an uncertain future with a present task at hand is difficult. Keuchel conceded as much Sunday. Pitching coach Brent Strom said this month the lefthander was “concerned about it” early his season.
“But when you break it down, we’ve got 25 guys in there who are going to battle every day and trying to win another championship,” Keuchel said. “So when you really think about it, it’s just showing up to the park and enjoying yourself and making sure that you’re doing everything you can to help those other guys out.”
There came a point this season when Keuchel didn’t feel he was. After his start against the Mariners on June 5, Keuchel’s ERA was 4.45. He was 3-8, although he infamously proclaimed to reporters he “knew what 3-8 feels like, and this isn’t it.”
Problems were mental and tactical. He incorporated more four-seam fastballs and changeups while curtailing his predictable reliance on a cutter. In the ensuing 20 starts, he produced the fourth-best ERA among American League pitchers, finishing with a 12-11 record and 3.74 ERA for the regular season.
“He did all the work,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “He did all the study. He takes meticulous care of his body. He prepared himself on a start-by-start basis, rather than try to carry a bunch of baggage from the first part of the season into the rest of the season.”
Gone, too, was Keuchel’s fixation on the future. He admitted Sunday he often peeked more at the starting pitcher he opposed — whether it be Corey Kluber or Luis Severino — than the lineup before him.
“I focused too much on the days ahead instead of the day that I needed to be present at,” Keuchel said.
To right the ship, he said he “really kind of beared down and continued to just take it day by day and in between starts really work on what I wanted to do the next time out and was able to make a few more quality pitches there for a five-, 10-, 15-start stretch.”
Keuchel can extend that Monday. Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole preceded him with masterpieces.
The Indians struck one extra-base hit against them in 121⁄3 innings.
A rested bullpen and proficient defense back the contact-centric southpaw, too, should he encounter trouble.
“He’s a professional,” Altuve said. “He knows how to get ready, how to prepare for any performance. I have all my confidence in him. I really believe that we’re going to win this game tomorrow.”
Doing so would prompt another clubhouse champagne celebration, the sort of scenes Keuchel savors.
“This team has made it easy to come to the ballpark every day and just enjoy it,” Keuchel said. “So I have enjoyed it, and whether or not this is my last run with the Astros, like I said, it’s easy to come to the ballpark with this group.
“I’ve cherished it enough that I know how to go about my business and do things the right way.”