Keller goes six scoreless with 'weaponized' sweeper leading arsenal

The sweeper wasn't the most-used pitch in Mitch Keller's arsenal Friday night, but it appeared to be his most dangerous. Keller threw 99 pitches and turned to the slider variant 16 times, generating seven whiffs and getting five strikeouts with it en route to throwing six scoreless innings in the Pirates' 3-0 victory over the Twins at PNC Park. 

"He weaponized it," Derek Shelton said. "He did a really good job tonight. He had to pitch out of a jam in the first, he had to pitch out of a jam in the fifth. I think we continue to see why he's a frontline starter. That's what frontline starters do." 

With that sweeper and the rest of his arsenal clicking, Keller allowed seven hits and walked a pair while striking out eight in his sixth straight outing of six-plus innings and two or fewer runs allowed. That's the longest streak by a Pirates pitcher since Gerrit Cole's eight game streak in 2015. 

"I put a lot of work into (the sweeper) mid-week," Keller said. "I just hadn’t been feeling really good with it, just didn’t feel like it was what it had been so I put a little extra work on it this time around. I think it showed tonight that it was pretty good. Keep going forward with that one.”

Keller's second sweeper of the night set the tone for his entire showing with the pitch, as he was faced with a situation with one out and two runners on after allowing a leadoff double to Trevor Larnach and a walk to Carlos Correa. In a 1-2 count against Max Kepler, Keller went to the sweeper and froze him with a called strike on the outer part of the plate for his first strikeout of the night: 

From there, Keller continued to build on the success of the pitch. The sweeper's second victim was Byron Buxton in the second: 

While Royce Lewis and Kepler were fooled in the fourth: 

Shelton acknowledged Keller's uptick in velocity as a big reason why the sweeper was such an effective pitch for him on this night. He saw an increase of over a mile per hour on each of his pitches, including the sinker and sweeper that saw a nearly two mile per hour uptick. Keller was averaging 95.2 mph on his sinker, which he turned to 29 times, and sat around 96 mph consistently when going to his fastball on 21 occasions.

"The sweeper plays when the velocity ticks up, especially when it ticks up on both the fastball and the cutter, then the sweeper becomes even more of a weapon," Shelton said. "And I think because of the velocity being up on those two, Mitch and Yaz did a really good job of using it."

Keller picked up his final three strikeouts of the night to get out of a bases-loaded jam in the fifth. He got Carlos Santana looking on a sinker to start the inning before three batters reached on a walk and a pair of singles. Keller got Lewis to swing through a sinker up and out of the zone before delivering with an emphatic strikeout of Kepler on this 3-2 sweeper: 

“I just had confidence in the sweeper on that one," Keller said. "I just tried to throw the crap out of it. If it was a strike, great. If it was a ball, hopefully he swung. And he swung. It was great all around.”

Shelton lauded Keller after his most recent start against the Blue Jays on Saturday for the way he's evolved in terms of the maturity he shows in pressure situations. That was, once again, on full display throughout the outing, including the sixth when Keller worked around a pair of singles to finish things off with a little help from a Bryan Reynolds diving grab: 

And a heads up play by Reynolds to throw to second on a single by Buxton, leading to an out on a base-running miscue: 

"You didn't see him get sped up," Shelton said of Keller. "We did a really good job. We didn't get sped up in the sixth. Bryan made the two great plays, made the diving play and then he made the deek on the ball that Buxton hit and we got backside and got one of the fastest guys in the game in a rundown. But I think you just see it. At no point did it look like he was not in control."

With his six unblemished innings, Keller saw his ERA drop yet again from 3.42 to a team-best 3.16. A drastic improvement considering he had a 5.18 ERA after his seventh start of the season in Oakland on April 30. 

Keller said that while the results weren't there in April, he feels about the same as he did back then. And with each passing start, he's looking better and better. 

“It doesn’t really matter who’s coming to the plate. I just try and lock in on the catcher like we’re throwing a mid-week side and try to execute the pitch," Keller said. "I don’t really care who’s in the box, one through nine. It’s the same to me. I’m trying to execute what I’m doing. The rest will take care of itself.”

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