Pitcher List Conversations are transcripts of interviews with professional baseball players—and sometimes, players discuss topics other than baseball. This has been lightly edited for clarity.
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MLB clubhouses are like families: Each one is different, reflecting the personality of a team. That will probably become apparent in this week’s conversation with Mitch Keller, which took place when the Pittsburgh Pirates played the Colorado Rockies (June 14-16, 2024). Although Keller answered most of the questions, David Bednar and Ryan Borucki contributed as well.
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Renee Dechert: You’ve brought back your hard slider after focusing more on your cutter and your sweeper over the last couple of years. What is the role of your hard slider in your arsenal?
Mitch Keller: The harder slider, I mean, especially to righties, it plays as a good pitch to use off my sinker.
And then to lefties, I can use the cutter and then go right to the harder slider that has more, a depthier action than the cutter, so just being able to use both of them and pair them together.
And then another way to use it is just throwing the harder slider, and then using the bigger sweeper off of that one.
RD: How did you go about developing that pitch and revising it?
MK: I threw it in 2019 and 2020 and then kind of got away from it for a little bit. And then as I started throwing the cutter again, started throwing it down in the zone, it had more of a hard slider action.
RD: How do you differentiate between your cutter, slider, and sweeper in terms of your grip and your cues?
MK: The cutter’s just offset four-seam, and then slider’s more of a true, like, slider feel. And then the sweeper’s like the split two-seam grip.
RD: What’s the best pitch you’ve thrown this year?
MK: The best pitch I’ve thrown this year . . . .
RD: The one that you look back and say, “Swords, man.”
Ryan Borucki: I know which one it is.
MK: Oh, yeah. [grins] Definitely the one where Max Kepler swung and missed, and it hit him. That’d be the best one I threw.
Mitch Keller, 88mph Injury-to-Insult Slider. 😯 pic.twitter.com/pm9Bi6qYaf
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 8, 2024
RD: Will you take me through it?
MK: Yeah. It was a three-two count, bases loaded, two outs. I threw a sweeper, and it hit him in the leg, and he swung at it. So it was pretty cool.
RB: Right in the leg.
MK: Right in the leg.
RB: Right in the thigh.
RD: Your teammates were impressed with this, I take it?
RB: Oh, yeah.
MK: They all loved it.
RB: One of the cooler things I’ve seen.
MK: At least they were pumping my tires about it.
David Bednar: I’ve seen better.
MK: Tough crowd.
RD: If you could have the pitch of any other MLB pitcher—if you could crib one of their pitches—whose would you take and why?
[Keller leans back in his chair and looks over his right shoulder at David Bednar, whose locker is next to Keller’s.]
MK: David Bednar’s four-seam fastball.
[Bednar and Borucki laugh]
RD: What do you like about David Bednar’s four-seam fastball?
MK: It’s really hard, and it’s got a good ride to it.
RD: David Bednar, if you could take one of Mitch Keller’s pitches what would you take and why?
DB: All of them. I love every single one of them.
MK: Dude, come on! One pitch.
DB: The sweeper. [He first pronounces this as “sweep-ah.”] I love the sweeper.
RD: What do you love about the sweeper?
DB: It’s nasty. [laughing] It’s nasty, baby.
RD: So, David, what’s the best pitch you’ve thrown this year?
DB: The best pitch I’ve thrown?
MK: The heater.
DB: Probably a fastball.
RD: A specific one.
DB: You’re putting me on the spot.
RD: This is Pitcher List. We’re hardcore.
MK: It’s not the heater Blackmon hit yesterday.
[laughing]
Charlie Blackmon home run off David Bednar:https://t.co/Lxfg5NCOLp
— Renee Dechert (@ReneeDechert) June 19, 2024
DB: I don’t know.
MK: Dude, just say one—a strikeout to close a game or something.
DB: Yeah, a strikeout to end a game. [He does not give a specific example, so here’s one.]
David Bednar K:https://t.co/8Icz0ASPJp
— Renee Dechert (@ReneeDechert) June 19, 2024
MK: He’s no help.
RD: What’s it like to be part of this rotation with all these young guys?
MK: It’s cool. I mean, these guys are really good—Paul Skenes and Jared Jones and Bailey Falter. Martín Pérez when he’s back healthy, and Marco Gonzales when he’s healthy, we’re really good. So it’s definitely a lot of fun, that’s for sure.
[Gonzales was to the left of Borucki and keeping up with the conversation.]
RD: I watched your spring training video where you’re mic’d up. You said you talk to yourself a lot.
MK: Yeah!
RD: What do you talk to yourself about?
Mitch Keller at Spring Training:https://t.co/MivJPB46St
— Renee Dechert (@ReneeDechert) June 19, 2024
MK: Um, just on the mound, I talk to myself a lot, like, what I want to do or where we’re at—just kind of helps me follow along in the game.
RD: Do you give yourself good advice?
MK: Um, sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Like, if I don’t execute a pitch, I’ll be pissed at myself, but I kind of flush it fast and move on to the next one.
RD: Last one from me. Do you do any yoga or Pilates?
MK: I don’t, no. I guess I kind of do some yoga movements, but like not a full yoga practice. But I do like that.
RD: What’s your favorite pose?
MK: Man, I don’t even know. Probably a Warrior pose.
RD: Nick Castellanos told me that was his hardest pose.
MK: It is a hard pose, but as a pitcher, I feel like I’m in that position a lot.
RD: Warrior 2?
MK: Yeah, right here. [He does a quick Warrior 2 while still seated.]
RD: Least favorite pose?
MK: [Exhales] I don’t know. Probably a plank or something. [laughs.]
RD: I’ll bet you can hold them for hours.
MK: Not hours. Maybe minutes!