How Keller 'keeps you honest' with his new pitch

BRADENTON, Fla. -- Last season was a year of reinvention and self discovery for Mitch Keller. Whether it was reworking his mechanics to find his fastball velocity again, adding the sinker or adopting a sweeping breaking ball, the pitcher at the end of the 2022 season was certainly different, improved and much more confident than the one who finished the 2021 campaign.

The experimentation wasn't over yet, though. This offseason, he wanted to bring back his original gyro slider, which leans towards a cutter, giving him yet another offering in his arsenal.

And if his performance in the Pirates 7-4 win over the Twins at LECOM Park Saturday is any indication, the cutter can certainly play. Of the 77 pitches Keller threw Saturday, 32 were cutters.

"A lot of lefties in the lineup," Keller said. "Just seeing where we're at using it and really getting comfortable using it before the season starts."

The Twins were able to get a couple of base hits against that new cutter, but went 2-for-8 with on the day with six whiffs on 14 swings and a couple of strikeouts. Also add in one Mark Contreras broken bat to the day's line, and you have a pitch that carried Keller to 4 2/3 innings of one run ball, striking out seven with three hits allowed, his only mistake being a sinker that was pounced on for a homer.

To be clear, the cutter and the gyro slider aren't exactly the same pitch, though they both are classified as cutters on pitch tracking. The general rule of thumb, as Keller explained earlier this spring, is that if the pitch is up in the zone, it's a cutter. If it's lower, it's that gyro slider. Being able to use it both ways gives him something to keep hitters off balance.

And looking at where those pitches landed, he used both often: 

It's a tool especially for left-handers. If the sweeper is the pitch to run away from right-handers and get whiffs, the cutter is the pitch that he can use to get back into counts against lefty swingers after falling behind.

"I think the cutter opens up a lot of room there for something," Keller said. "Something hard."

"That’s a good way to put it," Derek Shelton said. "It’s not a cutter that’s at 86-87 [mph], it’s 91-93. With that, it really keeps you honest on both sides of the plate."

Throughout his major-league career, Keller mostly used his original slider low and on his glove side. Now he is opening up the whole zone with a pitch that moves.

And for a team that's emphasizing strike percentages and throwing the ball in the zone more, having that extra breaking ball he can throw for strikes is key. There's a chart of each pitcher's strike percentage at the entrance of the LECOM Park clubhouse, and Keller's name is at the top. There's a reason why he's struck out 20 batters over 15 2/3 innings this spring, and why he's going to be the club's opening day starter later this month in Cincinnati.

"Just that mentality of filling it up," Keller explained. "Obviously sometimes you fall behind and you never try to walk anybody. There's some situations where you're trying to not let the guy hit the ball. But I think in spring training, it's, 'let's get after hitters. Let's dominate the zone.' I think that mentality has helped me stay within myself and let everything play in the zone because I've got things that move any which way now. Can kind of use that to our advantage to fill it up."

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• Keller was also extremely complimentary of his catcher, Austin Hedges, who he doesn't believe he has shaken off all spring.

"Hedges just has an unbelievable... I don't know what to call it. He just sees the game really well. He's already two pitches ahead of what he wants to do, which is really comfortable to know."

• It was pretty smooth sailing on the pitching side, with the exception of a bumpy sixth from prospect Carmen Mlodzinski, who allowed two runs on three hits and a pair of walks to allow the Twins pull back to within 5-4. Cam Alldred inherited runners on the corners, but got his two men to get out of the jam with the lead in tact.

Wil Crowe pitched a scoreless eighth and Colin Holderman closed things out in the ninth, though it didn't end with a pitch. Twins hitter David Banuelos took too long to get ready with two outs in the inning and was rung up on a pitch clock violation to end it. Obviously Banuelos wasn't too happy about it, but ironically, neither was Holderman.

"I was kind of mad too, to be honest," Holderman said. "He was mad, I was mad. I wanted to throw the pitch. You always dream about throwing in the ninth inning, punching a guy out. You don't dream it up like that."

* Ke'Bryan Hayes is having himself quite a spring, going deep for the third time with a no-doubter to left field:

Hayes has shown in the past he can hit the ball hard, but this is the first time he's been able to elevate that hard contact for an extended period of time. He has three home runs this spring of at least 106 mph. He only had two regular season home runs hit that hard in his career. That's a good sign that he might finally start maximizing those high exit velocities.

• Travis Swaggerty just continued to rake this spring. This 439-foot home run not only iced the game, but it was the longest spring hit by a Pirate that was tracked by Statcast:

This has been quite the spring for him, and it's due in part to his offseason prep work. That's partly because he got to actually work out this offseason and not just rehab his shoulder like last year, but he also went on the team's workout program rather than work primarily on what he wanted.

"I’m just moving better, honestly," Swaggerty said. "With the stuff they programed me to do, I’m a lot more fluid. Elasticity is a good word for it. I’m sequencing better with my swing. It’s just different exercises they give you to help sequence throughout the swing. Doing different medicine ball stuff or whatever it is, stuff to hone in on the mechanics of hitting when you’re just working out. There’s crazy science behind it, and I was like, ‘You know what, I’m actually going to do it this year.’ It feels good."

Swaggerty's OPS is up to 1.183 this spring. If this is a truly open competition, it's going to be hard to send him down to Indianapolis.

• Not to be overshadowed, Canaan Smith-Njigba lined a double, helping to make sure he stays in the mix in that outfield competition.

In the second base competition, Rodolfo Castro went 1-for-3 with two strikeouts, Tucupita Marcano drew a walk in his only plate appearance off the bat and Mark Mathias roped an RBI double.

Jose Hernandez, the Rule 5 pick who is competing for a bullpen job, allowed one run on two hits and a walk.