P2Daily: The Promising Version of Mitch Keller

I love seeing Mitch Keller doing well in the majors.

The good performance in this case is limited to two starts out of five this season. It’s a hopeful sign of the future that those two starts came in his last three outings.

On April 20th, Keller gave up one run in 5.1 innings, walking none and striking out seven. Yesterday he gave up one run in six innings, with no walks and five strikeouts.

I’m a believer that if you can show results in the majors once, it means you can do it anytime. The key is finding a way to perform that well consistently enough to remain in the majors, and then consistently enough to be an impact player.

This is not the first time we’ve seen a good start from Mitch Keller in the majors.

Who can forget his finish to the 2019 season, with one earned run and seven strikeouts in five innings over his final start of the year?

He made five appearances in 2020, and three of them were good starts.

Almost one year ago, he pitched 5.2 shutout innings, walking two and striking out five, in a start to a year that has gone similar to this one.

Similar, but not the same.

Cody Potanko had a good breakdown over at Pittsburgh Baseball Now, looking at what Keller is doing different this year.

If you look through his career, Keller has made enough starts like yesterday to show that he definitely has the talent to pitch in the majors.

The Pirates hope that he can take the next step and provide an impact out of the starting rotation.

That would require the consistency to make yesterday’s type of start the rule, rather than the exception.

In short, there have been a lot of reasons displayed to believe in Mitch Keller’s ability to be a productive MLB starter. Yesterday was just another example that he belongs in the majors.

Now if he can repeat yesterday as often as possible…