Pittsburgh Pirates: Takeaways From Mitch Keller’s First Grapefruit League Start

Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander Mitch Keller made his first start of 2022 Spring Training. So what takeaways are there from his first look after a long off-season?

Mitch Keller took the bump for the Pittsburgh Pirates on Saturday for the team’s second Grapefruit League contest. It’s been a long-awaited start for Keller after showing off some impressive stuff in bullpen sessions this off-season. So how did Keller’s first look after a long off-season go?

The first and most significant thing was his fastball velocity is way up. Keller consistently hit 96-97 MPH and even two 98 MPH fastballs by Tigers hitters. Overall, his fastball averaged out at 97.1 MPH, a 3.3 MPH increase from 2021. Notably, he only threw two fastballs 97+ MPH last season.

Keller’s breaking stuff also looked good. He showed an upper-80s slider with some bite and a low-80s curveball. Both also had an uptick in velocity compared to 2021. While Keller had good command over his four-seamer, his breaking pitches gave him a bit of trouble in the first. All three of the breaking balls he threw in the 1st inning were well outside of the strike zone, one of which was a wild pitch.

On the plus side, he settled down in the 2nd inning. All but one of the breaking balls Keller threw in the second were strikes. The only one that wasn’t called a strike was still located in the zone, but Keller didn’t get the call because of a poor framing job by Michael Pérez.

Another thing that was nice to see was he wasn’t giving up hard contact. He only gave up two hits. One was a seeing-eye single on a weakly hit ground ball by top prospect Riley Green. The other was the comebacker that hit him on the back-side of his thigh. The second hit left Keller with a bruise and pulled for precautionary reasons. Luckily, it seems only to have left a bruise, so nothing substantial.

Now the clear takeaway is his massive jump in fastball velo. A jump just over 3 MPH is outstanding to see. But I think the biggest takeaway you can get from his first outing was his improved command, especially in the second inning. Now, sure, it could just be an issue of shaking off the rust, but Keller struggled with command last year and problems getting it back under control last season. Seeing Keller struggle with some iffy command with his slider and curveball, then come out and throw every breaking pitch in the zone in the 2nd inning inspires confidence that this is an entirely different Keller from last year.

Although it was only 1.2 innings, Keller looked like a different pitcher in that brief look. Us fans should look forward to how he can not only build off of his first look in spring training but how he can build off of the impressive work he did over the off-season.