Keller impressive both with and without his best stuff

PITTSBURGH -- By the time the eighth inning rolled around, Mitch Keller didn’t possess his best stuff.

His first four-seam fastball of the frame, his 83rd pitch of the game, clocked in at 91.0 mph. Keller followed up with another four-seam fastball, this one at 91.8 mph. For as well as he’d pitched, Keller was nearing the end of his afternoon. He knew it. Jason Delay, his catcher, knew it. Derek Shelton, his manager, knew it.

Still, Keller needed to find what worked. Nearly three thousand pitches into the regular season, the All-Star used what he had to finish his afternoon on his own terms. Flyout. Groundout. Strikeout. Eight innings, no runs, seven punchouts, one free pass. Keller impressed with his best stuff; he impressed even more without it.

“As much as the first seven [innings] were really important, in my mind … the eighth inning was [as] important,” Shelton said following the Pirates’ 2-0 win over the Nationals on Thursday afternoon at PNC Park in a game that lasted 1:50, tied for the fastest nine-inning game this season. “[I told him], ‘You were at the end of your rope. Didn’t feel like you had a ton left … and you had a 1-2-3 inning on Sept. 14.’ That's important for moving forward, so that’s what really stood out to me.”

Keller’s eighth inning likely won’t be the only instance over the next couple weeks in which the All-Star will have to operate without his hottest heat, his funkiest funk.

Following a rough start against Atlanta, Keller talked at length about the necessity of learning how to pitch this much, this deep into a season, a workload he’s taking on for the first time in his career. Keller’s velocity has trended down in recent starts, a pattern that continued on Thursday against the Nationals. His four-seam fastball was 1.5 mph slower than his season average. His sinker was down 2.0 mph. His cutter was down 0.9 mph.

The right-hander has not given any indication that he is injured or grinding through any ailment. Shelton said after Keller’s start against the Braves that the velocity drop is “not concerning.” To Shelton, Keller’s eighth inning against Washington, then, was a “microcosm” of Keller’s ability to be effective as the season winds down.

Keller had an opportunity to become the first Pirate with at least two shutouts in a single season since Jeff Suppan in 2003, but in the ninth, Shelton ultimately elected to use David Bednar, who recorded his 35th save of the season.

Shelton said postgame that Keller’s velocity, which dropped to the low 90s, played a role in the decision, adding that the conversation would have been different if Keller’s velocity was in the mid-90s. Shelton also cited the fact that it’s September, alluding to how Keller has already thrown career-high 182 2/3 innings -- and counting. Keller, who finished with 92 pitches, didn’t lobby for the ninth.

“I think just being able to go out there and use all the pitches that I can use just keeps them off balance,” Keller said. “So, when we get into this time of year, we can use different pitches to get hitters off balance. Velocity is not the primary thing. It’s the execution of the pitches and making different pitches look like different things so we can get them off balance.”

Keller mixed in eight curveballs and five changeups against the Nationals, a pair of pitches that the right-hander hasn’t prominently featured for several weeks. Entering play, Keller’s curveball and changeup represented 4.8% and 2.1% of the pitches he’s thrown in the second-half, respectively. In his first two starts in September, Keller didn’t throw either pitch more than two percent of the time.

“Just being able to grow and know where we’re at with what we’ve used in the games, what we’ve used in previous at-bats and just keep going with it,” Keller said. “That’s just a thing that me, [pitching coach] Oscar [Marin], [game planning and strategy coach] Radley [Haddad], [Delay] and Endy [Rodríguez], we’ve all kind of grown in that aspect -- talking in the dugout about what we’ve used in the first couple of at-bats and what we can use later in the at-bats, too. It is tough seeing hitters three or four times, so you have to get creative and really execute.”