The return of Mitch Keller is here.
Keller was been scratched from his start for the Class AAA Indianapolis Indians Friday and recalled by the Pirates.
The Pirates do not have a starter listed for their game against the Phillies Sunday, though that does not guarantee Keller will start then.
Keller is coming up a few days after the Pirates traded Tyler Anderson to the Mariners and Chase De Jong had season-ending surgery, creating holes in the Pirates’ rotation.
Keller was optioned to Indianapolis on June 11 after recording a 7.04 ERA over his first 12 starts this season. While about half of those starts were good, lasting at least five innings and putting his team in a position to win, the other half ranged from bad to horrible. That inconsistency led to the Pirates optioning him rather than continue to struggle in the majors.
“It’s a challenging move,” Shelton said the day of the demotion. “It’s a tough move but it’s a move that’s important for both Mitch and the Pirates. We need to get him in a situation where he’s commanding the fastball better, he’s doing things that are making him an effective big league pitcher. We really feel he’s going to be a good big league pitcher but we’ve got to put him in a situation to do that.”
While with Class AAA Indianapolis, Keller has recorded a 3.21 ERA, 39 strikeouts and 13 innings pitched over 28 innings pitched. Six of his eight appearances were as a starter.
Down in the minors, Indianapolis pitching coach Joel Hanrahan wanted to remind Keller that “baseball is fun.”
“One of the things I told him on his first day here was, ‘You're in Indianapolis now. You’re not going to be on the front page of the newspaper, you're not going to be on MLB Network,” Hanrahan said in June. “You have a chance to just go out and pitch here. You’ve got one inning. Let's see what you've got.”
Last week, Keller opened up to our Jarrod Prugar about the stresses of being a top prospect and how he has learned to manage that.
"I feel like I'm getting, really close, if not back to where I used to be," Keller told Prugar.
