Mitch Keller's Impact: Key to Pirates' Playoff Hopes
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00:00 Mitch Keller. Come on, man. Well, I think it does bear a little bit of note last year
00:09 at this time, Mitch Keller is one of the best pitchers in baseball. We forget that. Go back
00:15 and look at those numbers. Look at those steps. He was unbelievable. He, we were talking to
00:19 him. It was like in the Cy Young race. Now he was inconsistent the rest of the year.
00:24 So far in the last two weeks, the last two games, 15 innings, 12 strikeouts, one walk
00:29 the Pirates did sign him to an extension this offseason, which raised some of our eyebrows.
00:33 We're like, what are the Pirates do? The Pirates aren't teams that are looking usually to sign
00:36 guys to extensions, but with all the hype around Jones, which has been terrific and
00:41 obviously the incredible free trade of hype that is Paul schemes, Mitch Keller kind of
00:46 gets lost in a shuffle of things. And all of a sudden that is a really interesting rotation
00:51 that the Pirates are going to be throwing out there. If the Pirates can somehow get
00:54 enough offense and these pictures can stay healthy, that's a dangerous trio of starters
00:59 to be throwing out there in a playoff series. That's short of any kind. So I'm not saying
01:03 the Pirates are a playoff team yet, but I am saying this is a better rotation that people
01:08 realize. And now that's a one, two, three, that is arguably really difficult in any series
01:13 to face. And if you keep, you know, we always say this, you're only as good as your third
01:17 starter, right? In the big leagues, when you're looking at wind totals, if Mitch Keller is
01:21 your third starter, he's going to pitch more like this guy or the guy that we saw in the
01:24 first half of last year. Well, guess what? That's going to make the Pirates an over on
01:29 their wind total this year.
01:30 [Music]