Keller conquers Coors with 'consistency and confidence'

DENVER -- Mitch Keller has been “checking off boxes” of late, as Pirates manager Derek Shelton puts it. Last Monday, Keller completed seven innings for the first time in his Major League career, a milestone he had been pursuing for 53 starts over four seasons. And on Saturday afternoon, he checked off another: pitching at Coors Field.

Keller tossed six more strong innings in a 2-0 loss to the Rockies, giving up one unearned run on five hits and two walks to go with six strikeouts on 95 pitches. And he did it in the most hitter-friendly environment in the Majors. The 26-year-old right-hander has yielded only two runs (one earned) in 13 innings over his past two starts, and dating to May 18, his ERA is 3.37.

The checklist for Keller isn’t complete yet, but when he was asked after Saturday’s performance whether this was the most complete he’s felt as a pitcher since making his MLB debut in May of 2019, Keller’s answer was emphatic -- well, as emphatic as it could be in his soft-spoken voice.

“In the big leagues? Yeah, of course,” Keller said. “It’s just consistency and confidence, and just really keeping hitters off balance.”

And therein lies the transformation of Keller midway through this season: Since introducing a sinker in mid-May, and taking some velocity off his slider when he wants to locate it for a strike, he’s been a different pitcher.

Keller continued to keep Pirates hitters off balance with his pitch mix, yielding only five hard-hit balls out of 17 put in play.

“A little bit slower, and I’m trying to locate it, and a little bit harder, it moves more. I’m trying to get a swing and miss with it,” Keller said of the slider. “I think to be able to throw that for a strike and for a swing-and-miss allows the sinker and four-seamer to play.”

The only run that crossed the plate against Keller shouldn’t have. With two outs and none on in the fifth, Keller got Rockies right fielder Connor Joe to hit a ground ball to short, where Oneil Cruz fielded it cleanly, but he airmailed the throw into Colorado’s dugout, enabling Joe to reach second base. Joe scored on the very next pitch, which Kris Bryant lined to center for a single.

Cruz, with all of his tremendous gifts -- power at the plate, an incredible arm and great speed -- will wow us often. But not always. No one can, especially when he’s a 6-foot-7 shortstop.

“That’s just unfortunate,” Shelton said. “I mean, we’re gonna have errors -- physical errors. … The ball came out of his hand a little bit elevated, obviously, and it’s one of those things. It happens. Unfortunately, it happened at that time.”

Cruz took a shuffle-type step before throwing, something that he does regularly, but Shelton said that’s not an issue -- it was simply a poor throw.

“I think you see a lot of good shortstops that make that shuffle step,” Shelton said. “[Boston’s] Xander Bogaerts is probably the poster child for it, the way he shuffles across. For a big guy to get his feet underneath him, you have to take that shuffle at times.”

The real issue Saturday afternoon, Shelton said, was that the Pirates couldn’t push any runs across. And it cost them a game in which they got another great effort from Keller. Still, for a team looking to the future as the Bucs are, you have to like what you saw from the young right-hander despite the final score.

“We’re seeing a different pitcher,” Shelton said. “ … I think the big thing for Mitch is that he continues to grow, he continues to learn and he continues to execute pitches. It’s something we’ve talked about for a couple of years now, and I think we’re really starting to see it.”

Keller is marking off the boxes on his proverbial checklist as he seeks to reach the potential the Pirates have seen in him all along. He checked Coors Field off the list, a venue that has flustered pitchers with far more experience than him over the last 27 years.

For Keller, the sinker-slider combination ensured that, at least for his first taste of Coors, it wasn’t so bad.

“I tried not to listen to too much extra noise [about the ballpark],” he said. “I felt really good. Coors Field is awesome.”