Jacob Stallings tapped his mit on the ground. As Mitch Keller began his motion to the plate, he sprung out of his crouch and put his target high and inside.
He was calling for high heat. He got it, but Keller missed the target. It hung over the outside part of the plate to the lefty swinging Tucker Barnhart, and the Reds catcher went with the pitch and put it in the notch in left-center:
Stallings’ reaction says it all.
Two batters later, after missing on a 3-2 pitch to his mound opponent, Tyler Mahle, Keller’s night was done. By that point, the Pirates were well on their way to a 14-1 loss to the Reds Monday night at PNC Park.
That’s been the pattern to Keller’s season. One good start, one bad. The good has been really good. Three starts that each lasted at least five innings with only three runs scored in total. The bad has been really bad. Four starts, 12 innings pitched, 21 runs allowed.
On Monday, it looked like it would be good to start, but it fell off the rails in the fourth. Getting ready to leave PNC Park Monday, they didn’t really know why.
"I don't have a good explanation for it, other than just missing spots,” Derek Shelton said. “In the big leagues, when you don't hit locations, you end up being in the middle of the plate, especially with a club that swings the bat as aggressively as they do. You get yourself in trouble, and that's kind of what happened.”
There are definitely theories being floated. A popular one calls his confidence into question. His tracked release points suggest he is throwing from a lower arm slot. A National League analyst told me that his slider is, on average, getting about half an inch less of movement, and is generally just spinning less.
Overall, the breaking isn’t playing as well. On Monday, the Reds swung at 10 of his breaking pitches. Seven were put in play, four for hits. The other three were fouled off. No whiffs.
But those explanations don’t truly explain Keller’s alternating Jekyll and Hyde performances. It would be one thing if he was consistently getting crushed. There have been positive outings that suggest he could be zeroing in on something.
“He’s frustrated by the inconsistency. He’s working hard,” Ben Cherington said last week. “I really believe in what he’s working on. It's important that he continues to pitch.”
Cherington also pointed out that plenty of other pitchers have gone through similar rough patches after this number of starts in their careers. Despite being nearly two years removed from his MLB debut, Keller has only made 23 starts. Most times, that’s just a normal rookie season.
It’s different when he’s in his third year instead, the second under Oscar Marin’s tutelage. It’s also different that he and JT Brubaker are, most likely, the only pitchers who could be part of the rotation a few years from now, and Brubaker is on the cusp of what looks like a breakout season.
Keller has shown moments of a breakout too. They’re just sandwiched between outings where his control is off.
Through the first three, Keller was hitting his spots. He needed just six pitches to get out of the first. With the exception of a Eugenio Saurez first-row homer in the second, he was avoiding the barrel and getting whiffs with the fastball.
Then Jesse Winker blooped a ball to center to start the fourth.
“It just all started with a jam shot, broken bat single, just kind of spiraled out of control out of that,” Keller said.
The Reds would plate a pair and put two more in scoring position before Keller would even get his first out of the inning. Barnhart’s double wound up being the backbreaker.
Had Keller hit Stallings’ target, odds are Barnhart would have fanned for the second out. With the No. 8 hitter up next and the pitcher to follow, Keller would have had a clear path to getting out of the inning with it still a two-run game. He probably would have come out for at least another inning and tried to build on what was working in his last start in San Diego.
Instead, the fastball came in flat, Barnhart put it in the notch and the Pirates’ bullpen got loose.
“It's just tough, because I felt really good,” Keller said. “I feel really good like I'm in a good spot with all my pitches, so it's just kind of tough to have that fourth go the way that it did.”
Keller finished the night with seven runs charged against him over 3 ⅓ innings. He walked two, struck out two and allowed seven hits.
Now he is in a spot he’s been in four times already this year: Looking to bounce back after a poor performance. He said after the game he was going to watch the film to see if he can pinpoint what went wrong in that fourth inning.
And for the mental side?
“Good or bad, you've just got to think about the next pitch, no matter what,” he said. “That's what I was thinking out there, just trying to flush whatever happened before it and make the next pitch.”
MORE FROM THE GAME
• The Pirates are now 0-4 against the Reds this season, being outscored 44-9 along the way.
"They're really aggressive," Shelton said. "They have a good lineup. They have some guys that are swinging the bat pretty well. When you're in the middle of the plate in a major league game, you're going to get hard-hit balls, and that's what we saw tonight."
• The bullpen didn't fare much better in relief of Keller, also allowing seven runs. Four were charged to Luis Oviedo over his two innings of work, and the other three to Geoff Hartlieb in his two frames.
"Tonight was obviously not our night," Shelton said. "We did not locate from the fourth inning on, in any stretch of the imagination. It seemed like every time we missed location, we paid for it."
Gerard has more on Oviedo and the bullpen here.
• Speaking of Oviedo, he and Reds infielder Alex Blandino almost caused the game to be delayed after getting into a National Anthem standoff:
WE HAVE A PREGAME STANDOFF 😂 pic.twitter.com/TPPsfMKhvi
— Bally Sports Cincinnati (@BallySportsCIN) May 10, 2021
Rookie mistake by Oviedo to break there.
• Jacob Stallings got the Pirates on the board in the second with a solo shot to left, but was unable to give his team the lead the following inning after going down looking with the bases juiced and two outs.
Leadoff hitter Adam Frazier went 2-for-3 with a walk and a double, extending his hitting streak to 11 games. Bryan Reynolds doubled, singled and walked twice in his four trips to the plate.
No other Pirate had a hit Monday.
• Before the game, the Pirates designated Todd Frazier for assignment to add outfielder Ben Gamel to the active roster.
Or should I say, outfielder and first baseman Ben Gamel. Shelton jokingly asked before the game if he could play any other position, and Gamel responded first base. After all, he played two innings there with the Mariners, one in 2017 and the other in 2018.
So to get Adam Frazier off his feet late, the Pirates rearranged their defense to put Gamel at first, borrowing a left-handed first base mit from assistant hitting coach Christian Marrero.
"He’s doubled his innings at first," Shelton joked.
Gamel went 0-for-2 with a strikeout in his Pirates debut.
THE ESSENTIALS
THE LINEUPS
Shelton's card:
Adam Frazier, 2B
Bryan Reynolds, CF
Ka'ai Tom, LF
Phillip Evans, 1B
Jacob Stallings, C
Wilmer Difo, 3B
Troy Stokes Jr., RF
Kevin Newman, SS
Mitch Keller, P
And for David Bell's Reds:
Nick Senzel, 2B
Jesse Winker, LF
Nick Castellanos, RF
Mike Moustakas, 1B
Tyler Naquin, CF
Eugenio Suarez, 3B
Tucker Barnhart, C
Kyle Farmer, SS
Tyler Mahle, P
THE SCHEDULE
The Pirates continue the search for their first win against the division-rival Reds with their best pitcher, Brubaker (2-2, 2.78 ERA) going against right-hander Jeff Hoffman (2-2, 4.39 ERA). The series rolls along with Tuesday's first pitch scheduled for 6:35 p.m.
THE CONTENT
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