Should the Pirates Trade Mitch Keller This Winter?

I remember being in Atlanta for the last series of the twenty twenty five season and asking Mitch Keller after his last start, if he thought maybe that could be his last start in Pittsburgh.

That ended up not being the case, but at this point last year, the discussion was they have to find ways to get this offense better in any way, and they have a pitching surplus.

Mitch Keller is the most established.

He is the most expensive.

It would make sense to dangle him out in trade talks.

Nothing ended up coming to fruition.

And really, it doesn't seem like a whole lot even ever came close.

Here we are a year later.

The pirates are in a position where they don't know what twenty twenty seven holds for Mitch Keller.

He had his first real shoulder injury or real injury in general.

He is set to make over eighteen million dollars and he was effectively a replacement level player.

He is going to be one of the biggest question marks this winter.

Good morning and welcome to Offbeat here on North Shore Nine presented by FanDuel.

My name is Alex Stumpf and this is a daily look at your Pittsburgh Pirates.

Whenever Mitch Keller signed his record-setting contract in spring training in twenty twenty four, I was happy for the guy.

There aren't a lot of guys who legitimately baseball-wise have to battle the way that he did.

He was a highly touted prospect.

He was also highly touted at a time whenever the Pirates didn't have a lot of prospects.

He was immediately met with adversity.

And his first couple years in the majors, I remember in twenty twenty one him over Zoom.

after a bad start.

Stephen Nesbitt of The Athletic asking.

How he's handling, a rough start, and he said he was the most pissed off guy in the room.

He was optioned the next day to triple A.

It was at that moment, I'm like, I don't know if Mitch Keller is ever going to pan out in the major leagues.

But you know what?

Came back in twenty twenty two with some extra fastball velo, added the sinker, added the sweeper, and he just took off.

Became an all star in twenty twenty three, signed that record setting contract in twenty twenty four, and part of that contract was.

kept in mind there's going to be a lot of young pitchers in this rotation.

They need a leader.

They need a North Star to follow.

He could be that guy.

And they're also going to be cheap, so you could allocate more of the starting pitching money to him.

It was a record-setting contract for a pitcher.

He, for the first two years of that contract, pitched all right.

ERA in the very low fours, but he made his starts.

He ate his innings.

He was someone who I think the ERA could have been lower, but there were plenty of times whenever he just didn't have his A game, and he's like, look, I'll still go five.

I'll wear it.

So he added, ten or twenty innings that maybe weren't the sexiest innings on earth, but, they helped the team.

They helped the bullpen.

Team player type stuff.

That first winter after signing the extension, Noah Hiles of the Post-Gazette reported that the Red Sox were in trade talks with him.

Finding out later that it was just a long conversation between those two sides for, hey, Pirates won an outfielder.

Hey, the Red Sox won a pitcher.

It took a long time to come to what was eventually the Yohan Oviedo for Jhostynxon Garcia trade, which at this moment really looks like a lose-lose.

Oh well, stuff happens.

But whenever that trade happened, it was like, OK, Red Sox probably aren't on the table.

And I went to that winter meetings in twenty twenty five thinking, all right, what would teams be willing to give up Mitch Keller to get Mitch Keller?

Because the Pirates weren't in a position that they were just going to dump him.

They weren't going to just salary dump him.

But if they could get a good hitter for him, let's see what happens.

And I talked to teams.

Sources I had around the league.

Teams who I would have personally identified as really good fits for Mitch Keller.

Teams that we're looking to add, looking to add starting pitching.

And basically, I got a universal, yeah, he's a number four or five.

Maybe.

And I'm like, oh, they're not going to give up the type of hitter the Pirates would want to trade him.

And as I said, no meaningful rumor there.

And to my knowledge, no meaningful discussion of a Mitch Keller trade really happened last winter.

This year, it's different.

Mitch Keller had a bad year.

ERA over five.

The shoulder injury cut his season short two months.

I'm willing to just chalk that one up to randomness, to stuff happens.

Because he had been so reliable, so healthy, such a workhorse for years that...

Yeah, you're allowed one trip on the Sixty Day IL without any eyebrows being raised.

Stuff happens.

I don't think that would really greatly affect his trade value.

And if Mitch Keller was theoretically a free agent right now, I think he would very easily get a multi-year deal.

If he was a free agent and he said, hey, Shoulder injury, bad year, but I've got an all-star game on my resume.

I have years of being able to make thirty-something starts.

ERA, pretty consistent in those years.

The guy from twenty-twenty-two to twenty-twenty-five, do you want to take that as a bounce back?

A team would give him a multi-year deal, and I think that contract would be quite lucrative.

We're not talking, the old school, what the Pirates got to sign Edinson Volquez a decade plus ago.

No, he would get a nice hefty paycheck.

I don't know if he would get what he's owed still on his current contract.

Right now, he is set to make a little north of eighteen million in twenty twenty seven and a little north of twenty million in twenty twenty eight.

Two years, thirty-eight, thirty-nine million.

That's not unheard of for a pitcher of his caliber, pitcher of his pedigree, pitcher of his age.

But I think that would be a little steep if he was a free agent.

And that's why if we are talking trade, a theoretical trade of Mitch Keller, I personally...

would either A, not expect really anything back in return, or B, you would have to eat a good chunk of that contract,

and that's assuming that C wouldn't be the only way to get out of the rest of the deal.

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If the Pirates were to theoretically dangle Mitch Keller here, and we, at this point, don't know how seriously they will pursue that i imagine just to give a very

conservative estimate here i imagine they would at least listen because they listened after if you were going to listen at then i assume pretty much you're always

going to listen I think they will listen.

I don't know if anything will come to fruition.

But if they did, and let's just say option A is what ends up happening.

The Pirates find a taker and they will send over some Dominican Summer League prospect in this theoretical.

And the Pirates don't have to eat any money.

And the Pirates payroll, which right now, depending on how arbitration settlements work, at the moment is projected to be about a hundred million dollars per MLB

spreadsheets.

That all of a sudden goes to eighty-two.

And I think you do have to look at immediately investing some of that eighteen million in a free agent starter, even though Carmen Mlodzinski could make a case otherwise.

But just at this moment, I think you need that extra starter depth.

I look at these starting pitchers.

Like, I don't know what Robbie Ray is going to end up signing for.

I don't know what Jack Flaherty is going to end up signing for, what David Peterson will sign for.

Like, there's a lot of...

I don't know if you have...

If you're going to trade Mitch Keller and then bring in another starting pitcher through free agency, I don't know how much you're actually saving at the end of the day then.

And I'll one up it.

I don't know how much better you're going to get.

Like Mitch Keller, look, there were a lot of red flags last year.

The most egregious being the fastball velocity dipping again, and now it's about two miles per hour less than it was in twenty twenty three.

But he acknowledged there were some mechanical things he did that weren't right.

I personally also have, and I wrote about it for Bookroll Bucks.

I don't think he got into his legs as well, didn't use his lower half as well.

And that's something that, an opinion that I've been able to form after years of talking to Oscar Marin about, Mitch Keller's mechanics.

I think there is an outcome where he does...

have some bounce back here and he turns back into the guy that we saw in twenty twenty four twenty twenty five and that'd be beneficial definitely but you could also argue that a guy with a two something war for eighteen

million dollars is still steep and it still puts you in the position next year of you have this guy who will be making who be set to make you know twenty million dollars

Maybe that's less of an issue if the owners get their way in these CBA negotiations and some floor is established, but we'll end up seeing if then.

I am personally pessimistic.

I am personally pessimistic.

It's an interesting question.

It's an interesting spot.

Because Mitch Keller, part of the reason he signed that extension was he was supposed to lead this group, and he did, and he has.

But this is also a more mature, older group.

This wasn't the team that...

This is a very different Pirates rotation now than the Pirates rotation was whenever he put pen to paper in twenty twenty four.

There is no Marco Gonzales and Martin Perez and Domingo Germán hanging out in AAA.

This is a very different rotation.

And even if you're not ready to hand over the keys to the fifth spot to Carmen Mlodzinski or one of the younger pitchers like Khristian Curtis or Wilber Dotel or Antwone Kelly.

you could still be like there's some depth there's still some upside I think there's still upside with Mitch Keller but I think you're in a spot that unless there is

a giant green light from ownership to spend you have to at least explore the possibility of would they be better off using that money elsewhere

I think he will have a better year in twenty twenty seven.

I think him being open that the mechanics weren't where they were.

He's a smart guy.

He's he did this once in a lockout before whenever he came back and he's throwing harder.

This is what happened in twenty one twenty two.

It would be great for the Pirates if it happened again.

I don't know if he's going to be, pumping ninety six, ninety seven as consistently, but there it's not out of the realm of possibility that a guy who's thirty years old can have a bounce back year.

Pirates have to decide if they are better off betting that bounce back year happens with them.

Or do they want to cash out?

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