Mitch Keller aims to be Pirates' starter on Opening Day: 'I always want to be the guy'

BRADENTON, Fla. — When Mitch Keller personally delivered season tickets to a Pittsburgh Pirates fan late last month, she expressed hope that he would be the starting pitcher for the home opener on April 7.

Keller kindly corrected her by saying he really wanted to pitch March 30 in Cincinnati. That would make him the Opening Day starter, an honor generally reserved for the anchor of the pitching staff.

“I always want to be the guy,” Keller said Monday at Pirate City. “Being the Opening Day starter would be sweet and so I’m going to try my (best) to be that dude.”

The Pirates have patiently waited for Keller to become That Dude ever since he was their top pitching prospect, only to see him struggle through ups and downs his first three major league seasons.

Something clicked last season, when he went 5-12 with a 3.91 ERA while leading the staff in starts (29) and innings pitched (159). More important, Keller pitched with a tenacity he hadn’t displayed with the Pirates since he was their minor league pitcher of the year in 2018.

“I think it’s just confidence, expecting things to go right,” said Keller, who avoided arbitration by agreeing to a $2.4 million contract this season. “My first thought every game I started was, ‘I know I’m going to do well today.’ I lost a little bit of that my first couple years in the big leagues. It started coming back with that mentality of, ‘Today’s my day. I’m going to shove.’”

Pirates manager Derek Shelton noticed a change in Keller’s mentality, as well as his physical presence. Keller, who turns 27 on April 4, has filled out his 6-foot-2 frame. More important, he’s handling adversity better than before and appears ready to rise to the challenge of developing into the staff ace, knowing that he still has so much to prove.

“I think we’ve seen him grow up,” Shelton said of Keller. “We’ve seen him grow up physically. We’re seeing him grow up mentally. His body has transformed in the four years I’ve been here into looking like a starting pitcher. You look at the way his lower half is now, but you have to do that. … That’s the transformation you make. It’s a credit to all the hard work he’s done.”

What impressed Shelton was how Keller bounced back from bad innings or bad games last season, scenarios that would have haunted him earlier in his career. Keller had a strong second half, recording a 3.09 ERA and 1.31 WHIP in 70 innings over 13 starts. He was 1-2 with a 2.06 ERA over his final six starts in September and October.

A year ago, Keller increased his velocity by touching triple digits on his four-seamer. But it was the addition of a sweeping slider and a two-seam fastball that changed his confidence level last season.

“Adding a new pitch kind of threw all expectations out of my brain of what I expected the day to be like,” Keller said. “Once I started throwing the two-seam and the sweeper, there were no expectations. It was, try it and see if it works. Well, it worked. Going from there, it was more of more I expected to dominate and things snowballed from there.”

Keller has been tinkering with a new pitch that he wants to test this spring, a gyro slider that plays like a cutter. He added it because his splits against left-handed hitters (.276/.359/.390 with 34 walks against 55 strikeouts) weren’t as good as those against righties (.257/.356/.386) with 26 walks against 83 strikeouts.

Perfecting the new pitch would give Keller three different fastballs in his arsenal with which to attack both lefty and righty hitters: A cutter up and in, a four-seamer up and a two-seamer in.

In his first live batting practice, Keller didn’t need to wait for catcher Tyler Heineman to flash his fingers. Keller already knew what pitches were working. Austin Hedges shook his head in disbelief when Keller froze him with a two-seamer inside.

“It was a good feeling to already know what I wanted to throw,” Keller said. “In the past, I hadn’t felt that way; I threw whatever the catcher threw down. Now, I know what my pitches do and I know what works and I know what’s feeling good that day. So I already know what I want to go to, and that’s a really good feeling — knowing what the pitch is gonna do and feeling comfortable with all of them.”

That Keller has gone from toying with new pitches to talking about mastering them is a sign of growth. Making an Opening Day start in Cincinnati would mark a full-circle moment for Keller, who made a disastrous major league debut at Great American Ball Park on Memorial Day in 2019. Pitching the second game of a doubleheader, Keller gave up a grand slam and suffered through a six-run first inning in an 8-1 loss.

“It would be cool to get some revenge for that first day, because that first inning really sucked,” said Keller, who ended up striking out seven batters in four innings that day. “After my debut, I settled down and got in there. But, yeah, that would be that’d be really cool.”

More than anything, Keller wants to take another step and become the anchor of a starting rotation that looks poised to include JT Brubaker, Roansy Contreras and veteran free agents Rich Hill and Vince Velasquez. Keller also is well aware that flamethrower Luis Ortiz and Johan Oviedo and top prospects Mike Burrows and Quinn Priester are at the doorstep of joining the major league staff.

“Definitely a goal. I think anyone of us can step up and do that,” Priester said. “It’s fun to have the competition. I think that’s pushing all of us to be better, especially with Rich and Vince being here, a good competition with everyone getting better. All of us want to be the dude that has the most starts, the most wins, the most strikeouts, the lowest ERA, whatever. I think that’s really cool. That competition is making us all a lot better. So I think any one of us could do it. My goals are to be The Dude, but results will dictate that.”