Royals’ Brad Keller talks about the good and bad of the baseball delay
Brad Keller’s daily routine feels reminiscent of high school summer ball. He rides with one of his boys to the field, swaps out the flip-flops or sandals on his feet for a pair of spikes in the parking lot and gets to work either playing catch or running in a relatively-empty field complex.
Except it’s not summer ball. It’s life in Major League Baseball in the age of COVID-19.
Keller, the Kansas City Royals right-hander and their would-be opening-day starting pitcher, is one of many players in bizarre circumstances as a result of the COVID-19 coronavirus which suspended spring training, postponed the start of the baseball season and effectively shuttered MLB team training facilities around the country.
“I think this is super foreign,” Keller said. “I think everyone’s trying to grind through and trying to find something that they can do to keep going and stay mentally ready and stay physically ready. So I don’t think anything compares to this, honestly.”
Last season, Keller made 28 starts in his first full season as part of the big-league starting rotation, including the season opener. He posted a 7-14 record with a 4.19 ERA, 122 strikeouts and a 1.36 WHIP in 165 1/3 innings before the Royals shut down his season due to an innings limit/workload concerns.
When MLB suspended spring training, the Royals were about a week and a half away from playing a pair of exhibition games on the road and then diving into the regular season.
Instead, he’s hanging out in Arizona where he and teammate Nicky Lopez share an apartment and make trips to the closed Royals training facility — players aren’t allowed inside and coaches have gone home to be with their families — to throw and work out on the fields and pitching mounds.
He’s been throwing two bullpen sessions per week, trying to simulate the break between innings when the Royals would bat or “up-downs” as they’re known in pitching circles.
While the players who use the fields are only working out in small groups of three or four, a pair of catchers are around to catch bullpen sessions and the grounds/facilities crew are keeping the pitching mounds in good condition.
“Talking to all my boys back home, where I would train everything is pretty much shut down,” said Keller, a Georgia native. “I basically would have been that guy trying to find a mound to throw off of, either buying one off the internet or something. Being in the backyard and trying to figure it out from there.
“But, to have that luxury to be able to stay here and have good weather and be able to stay on a routine is very, very helpful.”
Keller, 24, came into spring training working to refine a curveball he’d just started throwing over the offseason.
While he hasn’t faced batters in a game situation in more than a month, he has tried to make the most of this time by focusing on fine tuning details he wouldn’t get to focus on during the daily hullabaloo of the season.
Yes, that includes getting more comfortable with his curveball.
“Me and (Mike) Montgomery were talking about this yesterday,” Keller said. “We’d be kind of trying to figure this out in the middle of the season where we’re caught between going out there and competing versus during our side sessions, trying to get better at the same time.
“It’s like now every single day we can get out there and try some new and really trying to focus on pitches, spinning the ball, getting comfortable with certain grips, tweaking our deliveries.”
Keller estimated it would take three weeks of a second spring training for him to be fully ready to start the regular season.
Like pretty much everyone else in baseball, he’s heard or read the various scenarios bandied about.
Keller, who is from just outside of Atlanta, admitted that the reported plan which would call for three 10-team divisions caught his attention.
“You know, I saw that the Braves will be in (our division), so that’d be pretty cool, facing the hometown team again,” Keller said.
“But honestly, to me I just want to play baseball. I think that’s kind of the feel with all the guys I have been talking to. It doesn’t really matter what we do. We just want to get out there and play.”
