MITCH KELLER WANTS TO SUCCEED WITH PIRATES
ST. LOUIS — Mitch Keller considers Gerrit Cole and Tyler Glasnow friends and texts with them frequently during the regular season. The only member left from that triumvirate of talented arms the Pirates drafted between 200814, Keller is keenly aware of what happened to those guys in Pittsburgh.
Or, more appropriately, what didn’t happen. Neither Cole nor Glasnow became truly dominant until they left, Cole traded to the Houston Astros, Glasnow to the Tampa Bay Rays. Those new teams unlocked potential. They helped Cole and Glasnow pitch differently and thrive.
As Keller embarks Saturday on what many hope to be a breakout season for him, one buttressed by an offseason overhaul of his mechanics and a delightfully
dominant spring, Keller’s good buddies make for good fodder.
If only because Keller wants like heck to avoid suffering a similar fate.
“You can’t miss the fact that those guys — and others — have left Pittsburgh and done well,” Keller told the Post-Gazette on Wednesday after a workout at Busch Stadium. “I mean, it’s happened. But I know those guys want me to do it here. I want to do it here, too. Why would I wait? This might be the only opportunity I get.”
It certainly could be the last one, at least in Pittsburgh. For as much promise as Keller flashed coming up through the minor leagues, he’s 7-17 with a 6.02 ERA in 39 starts with the big club over the last three seasons.
And, sure, there’s nuance. Keller’s batting average on balls in play his rookie season was .475 — the highest ever for a starting pitcher since 1900 who logged 40 or more innings.
The pandemic-shortened 2020 season included just 21⅔ innings for Keller, while he bottomed out through a dozen starts last season, his ERA rising to 7.04 and Keller spending more time in the minorleagues.
We’ve also seen a bunch of good Keller vs. bad.
For example, if you split his first 12 starts of 2021, there were six where Keller had a 7.04 ERA with 29 walks in 19 2/3 innings and another halfdozen where his ERA was 2.28 and he walked just 11 in 272/3 innings.
The back-and-forth has been confounding. But for a few different reasons during spring training, that sort of stuff appears to be behind Keller, who’s consistently throwing in the upper-90s and has refined the use of his breaking stuff.
“When you feel good, you’re going to be more confident in what you’re doing,” Keller said. “Now I feel like I’m in a spot where I feel really comfortable physically, mechanically, and my confidence is really high.”
The site of Keller’s first start in 2022 couldn’t be more appropriate, given the trajectory of last season for him. A few days before a series in St. Louis,Keller chatted with the Post-Gazette at Dodger Stadium about how hard the start of the season had been onhim mentally.
Keller wasn’t having fun. The game felt hard. His confidence lagged. However it happened, whether it was work with Joel Hanrahan at Class AAA Indianapolis or Keller simply reaching some sort of breaking point where he looked himself in the mirror and knew he needed to change, his next start was a memorableone.
Keller channeled that frustration into beating the Cardinals and seemed to discover some confidence along the way. Now, it’s all about bringing it out again to start a season where the Pirates need Keller to become their horsein the rotation.
“Now it’s for real, and the stats matter,” Keller said.
If anyone is looking for a template on what to expect from Keller, his friend Cole Tucker has a few ideas. Tucker has watched Keller throw this spring, and it reminds him of how Keller dominated the minor leagues; how Keller had nothing higher than a 3.56 ERA from 2016-19 while piling up 512 strikeouts (against just 141 walks) in 492⅓ innings, with the righty leading the International League in most statistical categories when he made his MLB debut in 2019.
“I know how badly he wants to show that the guy we saw in spring training and his whole time coming up is him,” Tucker said. “It’s been cool to see him kind of revert back to that.”
This version of Keller has evolved in a couple ways, besides the readings on a radar gun. Keller plays with the grip and firmness on his slider to throw two versions — “a sweeper slider” and “the gyro slider.” One plays like a cutter (meaning harder velocity), the other is like a true breaking ball.
Keller has flashed better execution with his curveball and a growing comfortability throwing his changeup.
But as Pirates fans have seen with Keller, it’s less about the clubs in his bag and more about whether he’s going to be able to stay on the fairway without yanking something into the woods.
Keller isn’t on the back nine yet, but it does appear he’s approaching the turn.
“It almost seems like he’s back to being that dominant dude who’s throwing 97 [mph] the entire game, getting all of his stuff over, filling up the zone and making guys get in between,” Tucker said. “It feels like we just jumped in a time machine back to 2019 whenever everyone was doing back flips for Mitch Keller.”