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Mitch Keller Ranked Among the Top Ten Right-Handed Pitchers

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MLB Pipeline began their position-by-position rankings of the top prospects in baseball, starting with right-handed pitchers on Tuesday morning. As you can imagine, this is the deepest position in the game and it is top-heavy with elite prospects. Mitch Keller is one of the top 20 prospects in the game right now, but on the list of right-handed pitchers, he’s ranked sixth overall.

Jonathan Mayo has a breakdown of the best tools at the spot and he ranks Keller as having the best control (60 on the 20-80 scouting scale) and he also has Keller as the highest floor. That last one is impressive considering that four of the five players ahead of him on the list have at least Triple-A experience. That’s including Shohei Ohtani, who has pitched five years at Japan’s highest level, but has yet to debut in the States. Mayo notes that Keller’s combo of stuff, plus size and command, makes him the most likely to reach his ceiling of the group. I’d also throw in that Keller has a very low effort delivery, which should help keep him healthy, but also makes it easier to repeat his delivery.

Depending on how deep upcoming positions are, we might not see another Pittsburgh Pirate prospect make the top ten until next Tuesday when Pipeline has third base, shortstop and outfield over the course of three days. They plan to unveil their top 100 prospects list next Saturday on MLB Network.

John Dreker
John Dreker
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball. When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.

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