SEATTLE -- On a night when the Pirates slugged a franchise-record-tying seven home runs, on a night when Mitch Keller acknowledged he "didn't feel very sharp out there," it'd seem silly that nothing impressed more than a single Mitch pitch.
But man ...
Just watch this sweeper:
Been watching this kid pitch since his big-league debut. Never witnessed anything akin to that.
Jarred Kelenic's not some stiff. He's Seattle's stud cleanup hitter, batting .284 with a team-high 50 hits, 10 home runs and 25 RBIs. And watch the way he leaned forward into that thing before it came running his way. All in the final quarter of the ball's path, no less.
That's 82.7 mph, that's 19 full inches of break, and that's home plate umpire John Tumpane back there apparently appreciating as much as anyone else.
"The sweeper?" Keller would come back when I'd reference the pitch only vaguely. "That's probably about the only pitch I had on tonight. I tried to use it as much as possible."
Keller improved to 6-1 even as his ERA swelled from 2.44 to 3.01 with a line of six-plus innings, six earned runs, seven hits, two home runs, eight strikeouts, two walks and a hit batsman. But that Kelenic K was part of a string of nine batters set down that settled matters enough for his teammates to keep mashing home runs of their own.
“The thing that I really liked about it is that Mitch Keller last year, Mitch Keller the year before ... he gives up eight," Derek Shelton said, referring to Keller's lack of command. "But he didn’t. He grinded through it, gave us a start to be able to win the game, and I think that just shows his maturity."
I posed to Keller that, in his next start, he could simply throw that same pitch 90% of the time.
"Ha!" he'd say. "We'll see."
