How the break between spring training camps helped Keller grow into a future Royals ace
Ace.
That label — the big one all starting pitchers covet — was placed on right-hander Brad Keller last year in spring training before he’d even experienced a full season in a big-league starting rotation.
Prominent Kansas City Royals players like pitcher Danny Duffy sang Keller’s praises as potentially the best pitcher on the staff. Star catcher Salvador Perez dubbed Keller the staff’s “ace” the day pitchers and catchers reported. Keller even started KC’s season opener in 2019.
The 6-foot-5, 250-pound Keller flashed that potential last season and also hit some speed bumps before the club shut him down in August of last year due to an annual innings limit.
This year, despite the disjointed nature of spring training and a COVID-19 infection that set Keller back even further this summer, he has shown signs that he’s poised to grow into that ace label. He has settled into a new level of consistency both physically and mentally.
“I think with Brad, he went through the typical growing pains of a pitcher that’s coming out of the minor leagues,” Royals pitching coach Cal Eldred said in July. “We stole him out of another organization extremely young, tried to feed him real slow and then he was gobbling up everything we gave him so we pushed him.
“We pushed him last year until we thought we needed to back off a little bit. Now he’s at a point to where let’s learn from all those experiences.”
A Rule 5 Draft pick in December 2017 by the Cincinnati Reds who was later traded to the Royals, Keller pitched in 41 games (20 starts) in 2018 before he became a full-time starter last season.
In 2019, he posted a 7-14 record with a 4.19 ERA, 122 strikeouts in 165 1/3 innings, a 1.355 WHIP and 6.6 strikeouts per nine innings in 28 starts.
The pandemic-prompted hiatus between spring training in Arizona and the restart of spring training in Kansas City played a “huge part” in Keller’s continued maturation, in Eldred’s estimation.
The health of pitchers and their throwing arms was a concern across baseball during the period from mid-March until early July. And rightfully so, as injuries among pitchers have been prevalent in this shortened season.
That break in spring camp also provided a unique and valuable “opportunity” for a pitching coach like Eldred.
“We got to take all of our pitchers in the organization, those on the 40-man roster and shift them back into player development,” Eldred said. “They had an opportunity when their arms were as healthy and felt as good and strong as they possibly could be to work on some of those things without the strain of, ‘You’ve just got to make it to the next start,’ or, ‘You’ve just gotta make it to the next outing and get outs.’ You can’t do that in a bullpen in between.”
Eldred said at the time that the break might have helped Keller as much as anybody, giving him more time to work on his changeup. Eldred also alluded to strides in Keller’s overall pitching, mentality and thought process.
Eldred made those comments in July, and they certainly seem like sage observations now.
Keller started off this season by throwing 17 2/3 scoreless innings, including five no-hit innings against the Cincinnati Reds in his third start.
Monday night at Kaffman Stadium, he battled Cleveland Indians’ Cy Young candidate Shane Bieber in a pitcher’s duel in which neither allowed a run through the first six innings.
In five starts this summer, Keller has gone 3-1 with a 1.93 ERA, 23 strikeouts and 12 walks in 28 innings. He has a 1.036 WHIP and 7.4 strikeouts per nine innings.
At the start of last season, Keller struggled with command and ran up high walk totals with regularity. In 12 starts from March through May, he walked 42 batters and struck out 48 in 71 innings.
As a pitcher heavily reliant on his sinker and pitching to contact, that formula was way out of whack.
“I think it just comes down to trusting your stuff,” Keller said. “Last year, I kind of got into a little funk where I was falling behind a lot of guys, walking a lot of guys. It felt like I was walking five per game. I didn’t trust my stuff. I didn’t feel like my sinker was where I wanted it to be. I didn’t feel like I had the fastball command I wanted.
“It felt like I was timid to throw to guys, especially when you get to the middle of an order — guys who do damage — I felt like I was always falling behind those guys. I felt like it was a mindset change where you have a confidence that your stuff is better than what they can hit and just go after them instead of fiddling on the edges.”
Keller said he feels more confident and capable of executing and sticking to the game plan this season. He’s been aggressively pitching in the strike zone and challenging hitters.
During his struggles last year, Keller repeatedly identified issues with his pitching mechanics as the primary culprit for his command problems.
He recently explained why having trust in his “stuff” isn’t mutually exclusive from those mechanical flaws.
“They kind of go hand in hand,” Keller said. “When your mechanics aren’t great, you kind of lose faith in your stuff because I know when I’m sound, this is what it’s going to feel like.
“When I’m mechanically a little bit off, you lose trust in what your pitch is going to do. They go hand in hand. I think it started off mechanically and kind of trickled into the mental side of it.”
That brings full circle what Eldred mentioned in July about making progress. It also puts Keller in position to understand and help the Royals’ young crop of pitching talent, led by Brady Singer and Kris Bubic, through their own growing pains.
“I think we kind of take him for granted and forget he’s 25. That’s unbelievable. He doesn’t pitch like it either. He’s special,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “ … This is a guy that they can kind of compete with, and that’s going to push them.
“That’s going to show them what it looks like, one, to be a pro and, two, he’s going to make them try and take that role — whatever you want to call it.”
This story was originally published September 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
