Tim Benz: Backslide from Mitch Keller is most concerning aspect of 2023 Pirates

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A lot has gone wrong for the Pittsburgh Pirates since their 20-8 start to open up the season.

By “a lot” I mean pretty much … everything.

• As a team, the Pirates have sunk to 44-56, good for a last place in the National League Central division.

• Because of injury and ineffectiveness, the seasons for third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes and outfielder Bryan Reynolds have been disappointing. Hayes has just five home runs and a .252 batting average with a .683 OPS. Reynolds is clipping along at a pedestrian .751 OPS with 10 home runs and a batting average of .256. Hayes signed a $70 million contract last year. Reynolds inked a $106 million deal this year. Neither has instantly justified those decisions.

• Since manager Derek Shelton signed his contract extension April 22, he is 29-49. His career-winning percentage is .384 (186-298). That’s tied for 11th worst all-time, the same percentage as another former Pirate bench boss, John Russell.

• There’s still no word on when Oneil Cruz will be back from the broken ankle he suffered April 10.

• No pitcher with more than 10 starts has an ERA under 4.00.

• The Pirates’ most consistent player is David Bednar. And they can never get him the ball. He only has 20 save opportunities this season.

That enough examples?

But of all those things that have turned sour for the Buccos, the most disturbing trend is the recent demise of Mitch Keller.

As of May 20, Keller was 6-1 with a 2.44 earned run average. The right-hander is now 9-6 with a 4.01 ERA. He has allowed 14 earned runs in his past two outings coming off an All-Star appearance. Keller’s ERA in July is 7.04 over four starts. He has just one win since June 12.

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The 27-year-old is seeing a dip in strikeouts too. From April 27 to May 31, Keller didn’t have a start with fewer than eight strikeouts. He hasn’t touched that total since.

Keller says his problems aren’t the result of anything health related. After his 7-5 loss Sunday to the Los Angeles Angels — in which he allowed six earned runs and three homers — Keller insisted that he “felt the best (he has) felt” since the beginning of the year.

Via TribLIVE’s Jerry DiPaola, Shelton claimed Keller’s biggest issue during the loss was pitch selection.

“It looked like he got away from his fastball a little bit, and he had some situations where he could have used it and got beat with some secondary stuff,” Shelton said.

The manager also assessed location as an issue.

“When you stay in the middle of the plate in the big leagues, you’re going to get hit and that’s what happened,” Shelton said. “He’s left more balls in good hitting zones, and when you leave the ball in the hitting zone, you’re going to get hit.”

Whatever the case, the Pirates need to figure it out or Keller needs to do so himself. With the stagnation in the development of the rest of the staff this year, the Pirates can’t afford to watch Keller regress to his old, inefficient, inconsistent ways of years past. His partial breakthrough this season must carry over to next year so that the Pirates can build a staff around at least one guy that they know they can count on as a legit Major Leaguer.

The Pirates have had way too many pitchers like this in their recent history. Pitchers that they have stuck with through the roller coaster of Major League development, only to see them have an epiphany of a few months, then lose it again.

• After three years of trying to round out his game, Jason Schmidt won 13 games in 1999. A frayed rotator cuff ate into his ascent in 2000. He struggled upon a return in 2001 and was traded to San Francisco where he made the All-Star game three times and nearly won a Cy Young in 2003.

• Oliver Perez was like Keller in 2004. He had 12 wins, a 2.98 ERA and led the Major League in strikeouts per nine innings at 11.0, with a total of 239. Then he kicked a laundry cart in 2005, busted a toe, and finished with a 5.85 ERA. He was 2-10 the next year with a 6.63 ERA and was traded to the New York Mets.

• Tom Gorzelanny won 14 games and gobbled up 201 innings in 2007. He was never the same after that and was traded to the Chicago Cubs in 2009.

• After a confounding and frustrating first few years as a Pirate, Charlie Morton showed glimpses in 2011 and helped the Pirates to a wild-card berth in 2013 after coming off the disabled list. Then he lost his touch, dealt with injury and got traded in the winter of 2015 — eventually going on to have some All-Star moments and postseason success with the Astros, Rays and Braves.

• Even after dealing with myriad illnesses and injuries, Jameson Taillon posted a 14-win season and a 3.20 ERA in 2018 before being bitten by the injury bug yet again and dealt to the New York Yankees.

Keller may not have a history of arm problems and laundry cart attacks like those guys did. But flashing his talent for an extended stretch, only to watch it wither as this latest lost season has dragged along, is disturbingly familiar to those cases.

Keller can’t be like that for this Pirates team. He’s too important to their future. But he has also unfortunately become a big reason why that great start in April already feels like the distant past.

Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at [email protected] or via Twitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.

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