Battling through a rough night is part of the journey for Royals’ Brad Keller
Royals pitcher Brad Keller makes it easy to forget he still hasn’t started 30 games in his major-league career.
Having already made the journey from unknown to rotation mainstay and staff ace inside of one season and one month lures you into thinking he has already been through the ups and downs and growing pains of a young talent.
Potential learning experiences remain around every corner for the 23-year-old right-hander, and Monday night’s loss to the Tampa Bay Rays at Kauffman Stadium served as a prime example. His manager Ned Yost certainly believed there was more to be taken from the outing than the fact that he allowed five runs and six hits in five innings.
“A lot of people could’ve been out of that game in the second inning,” Yost said. “I told (pitching coach Cal Eldred) there’s no way we’re doing that. One, I can’t afford it. I don’t have the pitching for it — he’s going to have to go 100 pitches.
“A lot of guys could just continue to fight it, fight it, fight it and be down 10 runs, be down 11 runs. But he continued to compete.”
The Rays scored a run in the first and tacked on three more in the second. Meanwhile, Keller — having not pitched in a week because of a five-game suspension coupled with the team’s off day Thursday — regularly misfired from the start of the first inning.
“You’re going to have days where you gotta really compete,” Yost said. “You’re going to have days when you’re going to have to battle with tools you don’t even know how you’re going to battle with, how you’re going to be able to throw a strike because you’re just so off. To his credit, I was really proud of the way he competed.”
Keller admittedly didn’t know how he was going to throw a strike at times. With two outs in the first, he walked a batter, uncorked a wild pitch and committed a balk to almost gift wrap the Rays’ first run.
He walked three batters and hit another in five innings, and at times he made catcher Martin Maldonado look like a hockey goalie scrambling frantically just to get a piece of a speeding puck.
After the three-run third, it could have easily turned into a steady flow of runs for the visiting club. Instead of taking advantage of Keller, the Rays were held scoreless in the third and fourth innings.
Keller faced the minimum of six batters in that stretch, thanks to a Avisail Garcia grounder that Adalberto Mondesi and Whit Merrifield turned into an inning-ending double play. That double play rendered one of Keller’s walks inconsequential.
“That second inning could have spiraled out pretty quickly,” Keller said. “But to put up two zeros ... felt pretty good. I really wanted to get into the sixth as much as possible. I knew my pitch count was up there. I wanted to get us as deep into the game as possible.”
His pitching mechanics were out of whack, but, as Yost explained, they couldn’t afford to give Keller a mulligan and just hand it over to the bullpen.
“We made some adjustments and went out of the stretch and tried to stay through the ball,” he said. “And it worked for two innings and then we kind of ran into trouble in the fifth. It’s tough to adjust in the middle of the game.”
The Rays pushed another run across in Keller’s final inning after a leadoff walk and a pair of one-out singles.
While the outing ultimately it goes in the books as a loss for Keller and the Royals, it’s all a necessary part of the maturation process for a young player dubbed the ace of his staff with 20 career starts coming into this season.
This story was originally published April 30, 2019 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Battling through a rough night is part of the journey for Royals’ Brad Keller."
