With Major League Baseball’s trade deadline less than two weeks away, the rumor mill is now in full operation. One name in particular seems popular among contenders: Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander Mitch Keller, who has been linked to the New York Yankees, New York Mets, and Chicago Cubs (among others).
Keller, 29, is having a grand season. Ignore his ugly won-lost record and focus on his 3.48 ERA and his 3.41 strikeout-to-walk ratio. His resulting 123 ERA+ would represent a full-season personal best.
Given that starting pitching is always in demand at the deadline, it’s easy enough to understand why clubs are taking note. The Pirates’ pitching depth and need for hitting, meanwhile, explains why they would consider listening to offers on one of their longest tenured players.
But there’s more to Keller’s game than meets the eye. Below, CBS Sports has highlighted three reasons he’s a popular trade candidate, including his perceived upside and his contractual status.
1. Track record
As noted above, Keller is in the midst of a banner season. That doesn’t mean he has a limited body of work, however. He had established himself as a reliable workhorse even prior to this year. Indeed, he’s started at least 29 games in each of the past three seasons, all the while compiling an ERA+ between 100 and 106 each year. Since Opening Day 2022, he ranks 11th in innings pitched among all arms.
Here’s where Keller ranks since 2022 in some important categories among the 135 pitchers with more than 300 innings thrown during that time period:
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Innings pitched: 11th
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Games started: 8th
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ERA+: 65th
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K/9: 72nd
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K/BB: 60th
Those marks may not seem overly impressive on their own, but look around the league and you’ll find plenty of good teams who would love to add a demonstrably league-average arm to their playoff rotation. And that’s without considering the possibility that there’s more chicken left on the bone.
Do you hear that? Sounds like an appropriate segue to the next section.
2. Untapped upside
It may sound silly to throw out words like “upside” and “potential” with a pitcher who is eight months from celebrating his 30th birthday. But the reality is that many big-league front offices care less about what a player has done or is doing right now and more about what they can do heading forward.
Keller has long intrigued pitching nerds because of his motor preferences. He’s a supinator, a fancy way of saying that he tends to pitch around the ball rather than through it. In turn, he’s able to benefit from seam effects (think: unexpected movement) and create more enticing breaking ball shapes with better velocity than his pronator counterparts (those who pitch through the ball).
This isn’t just theory, it’s reality. Keller’s arsenal already includes three breaking balls (a curve, a traditional slider, and a sweeper) as well as two fastballs (four-seamer and sinker) and a changeup. He’s even thrown a few pitches that resemble cutters, though it’s unclear if that was by design.
Of course, you might question if Keller actually has the capacity to perform better if his repertoire is this expansive. It’s a fair point, but it’s wholly plausible that other teams see tweaks to be made with his arsenal or, at least, his sequencing that could unlock better production. Bear in mind, Kansas City Royals righty Seth Lugo had a similarly deep arsenal and he couldn’t establish himself as a legitimate big-league starting option until his age-33 season. Sometimes, patience is a necessity, not a virtue.
There’s one other factor worth keeping in mind about Keller’s attractiveness to contenders.
3. Contract
You can’t acknowledge a player’s trade value without discussing their contractual status. Keller would have been on the cusp of free agency if he hadn’t signed a five-year extension in February 2022 that guaranteed him $77 million. That means he’s under contract through the 2028 season, with $54.5 million more coming his way after this year.
If you view Keller’s remaining obligation as a three-year pact worth a little more than $18 million annually, it’s an absolute bargain relative to what he would likely receive on the open market. To wit, here is Keller in comparison to some free-agent pitchers who signed multi-year pacts last offseason:
As you can see, the innings and WAR totals aren’t particularly close. It stands to reason, then, that Keller is significantly underpaid for what he brings to the table in quantity and quality.
Factor in the possibility that Keller can up his game elsewhere and the lack of top-notch alternatives and it only makes sense that he’s one of the most popular trade candidates of the summer.
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