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Brad Keller

Royals Select Dylan Coleman

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The Royals have selected the contract of righty Dylan Coleman and reinstated right-hander Brady Singer from the injured list, per a club announcement. Kansas City moved fellow righties Brad Keller and Wade Davis from the 10-day IL to the 60-day IL in a pair of corresponding 40-man roster moves. (A 40-man move was necessary for Singer, who’d been on the Covid-related injured list.) The Royals are also calling up outfielder Edward Olivares as the 29th man for today’s doubleheader.

Coleman, 25, joined the Royals alongside Olivares in last summer’s Trevor Rosenthal trade with the Padres. The 2018 fourth-rounder has enjoyed a strong season in the upper minors, splitting his time between Double-A and Triple-A while recording a combined 3.28 ERA with a massive 40.4 percent strikeout rate and a 9.6 percent walk rate in 57 2/3 innings of relief.

Coleman ranked 18th among Royals farmhands on the midseason rankings from FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen and 29th over at MLB.com. Longenhagen notes that while Coleman lost some life on his fastball in 2019, he’s now throwing harder than ever before, sitting upper 90s and occasionally reaching 100 mph. Both FanGraphs and MLB.com note that his slider lacks consistency, however, so he’ll need to refine that offering (or develop a new secondary offering) if he’s to settle in as a high-leverage option in the Kansas City bullpen.

The news on Keller and Davis isn’t especially surprising at this point. The Royals revealed last week that Keller would be shut down for the season, and Davis went on the injured list due to shoulder inflammation five days ago. He’d technically have had time to return, but there’d only have been about a week’s worth of games remaining on the calendar by the earliest date on which he could be activated. Davis is a free agent at season’s end. Keller is arbitration-eligible and under club control through the 2023 season.

Royals Shut Down Brad Keller For Remainder Of Season

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Right-hander Brad Keller has been shut down for the rest of the season, Royals manager Mike Matheny told MLB.com’s Anne Rogers and other reporters.  Keller hasn’t pitched since August 26 due to a Grade 2 strain in his right lat, and there isn’t enough time remaining in the season for Keller to fully rehab and return to the mound.

The news officially ends Keller’s fourth MLB season after 26 starts and 133 2/3 innings, and beyond reliably taking the ball and soaking up some innings in the K.C. rotation, 2021 was certainly Keller’s most difficult year.  The righty posted a 5.39 ERA/4.84 SIERA, plus strikeout (19.6%) and walk (10.4%) rates that were well below the league average.  The walk rate is the worst of Keller’s brief career while his strikeout rate is actually his best, as Keller has relied on a grounder-heavy arsenal to retire batters.  Keller was aided by a .280 BABIP over his first three seasons, though the combination of a .347 BABIP and some of the worst hard-contact numbers in league contributed mightily to his struggles this year.

While the overall numbers are grim, most of Keller’s issues came in the first half of the season.  Over his last nine starts and 52 2/3 innings, Keller had a much more respectable 3.42 ERA, though his strikeout and walk rates were only slightly improved.  Still, if Keller had somewhat turned the corner on his season, his lat strain cost him the opportunity to make a strong finish and earn a few extra dollars in arbitration this winter.  Keller will be arb-eligible for the second time this winter, after agreeing to a $3.35MM salary for 2021.

Though the Royals have several younger pitchers who will be expected to take on bigger roles in the 2022 rotation, Keller’s tough season likely won’t threaten his spot in the starting five.  Keller is still only 26 himself, and the former Rule 5 Draft pick has had enough success at the MLB level that the Royals aren’t going to give up on him this quickly.  However, Kansas City might still look to add another veteran starter this offseason in order to add some reliability to a rotation mix that struggled as a whole.

Central Notes: Royals, Cardinals, Tigers

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The Royals are placing Brad Keller on the 10-day injured list with a right lat strain, per Anne Rogers of MLB.com (via Twitter). Josh Staumont has returned from the COVID-related injured list to take his roster spot. Keller has reliably taken his rotation turn all season long for Kansas City, totaling 133 2/3 innings across 26 starts (though he was removed from his last start). The quality of those turns hasn’t perhaps been what Keller or the Royals would hope, however, as he owns a 5.39 ERA/4.72 FIP and -0.2 rWAR. Staumont, for his part, spent just one day on the injured list.

Let’s take a spin around the Midwest and see what shakes loose…

  • Carlos Martinez is probably done for the year, per MLB.com’s Zachary Silver (via Twitter). Wade LeBlanc is also questionable to return after feeling some elbow pain in his latest bullpen. If Martinez’s season is truly over, it will have been a disappointing one for the one-time Cardinal ace. Martinez owns a 6.23 ERA over 82 1/3 innings. A 4.76 FIP suggests it might not have quite been the disaster season that those baseline numbers suggest, however.
  • While we’re here, we might as well check in with Jack Flaherty, who is also questionable to return this season. The Cardinals are putting him through a series of assessments now. What matters most is making sure he’s healthy for 2022, per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Same story for Ryan Helsley, who will have arthroscopic surgery on his left knee and look ahead to next season.
  • The Tigers released Renato Nunez, per Evan Woodbery of the MLive Media Group (via Twitter). Manager A.J. Hinch suggested that there weren’t enough at-bats to go around in Triple-A for Spencer Torkelson, Aderlin Rodriguez, and Nunez. The Tigers outrighted Nunez a few days ago, and he will now be free to sign anywhere.

AL Central Notes: Grandal, Keller, Twins

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The White Sox announced Friday that they’ve reinstated catcher Yasmani Grandal from the 10-day injured list and optioned fellow backstop Zack Collins to Triple-A Charlotte. Grandal missed nearly two months following surgery to repair a tendon tear in his left knee, during which time Chicago leaned on Collins and Seby Zavala to shoulder the workload behind the dish. It’s been an odd season for Grandal, who has walked at an astonishing 24.4 percent pace through 246 trips to the plate and matched his career-high in isolated power (slugging percentage minus batting average). But Grandal is also batting just .188, thanks in large part to a .189 average on balls in play. The end result is a nonconventional .188/.388/.436 batting line that still translates to a 134 wRC+ because of that enormous on-base percentage and Grandal’s considerable power. Notably, Grandal’s 26 percent strikeout rate isn’t a huge increase over his 24 percent career mark, and he’s sporting career-highs in hard-hit rate and exit velocity (by a wide margin). There’s good reason to think the batting average and overall batting line can tick upward — provided he’s back to full strength.

More from the AL Central…

  • Royals righty Brad Keller exited last night’s start early and is being evaluated for what the club describes as “posterior right shoulder discomfort,” writes Anne Rogers of MLB.com. The right-hander said after the game that his shoulder felt “tight” and “sore.” The 26-year-old Keller has had a rough year overall but looked to be on the right track after a disastrous three-month run to begin the year. Keller pitched to a 6.67 ERA through the end of June, but in his past nine starts he’s worked to a 3.42 ERA (4.37 SIERA) with greatly improved strikeout and walk rates. A former Rule 5 pick out of the D-backs organization, Keller has emerged as a mainstay in the Kansas City rotation, pitching to a 3.50 ERA in 360 1/3 innings from 2018-20. This year’s struggles have weighed down his numbers, but he still possesses a solid 4.01 ERA in 494 innings since the Royals gave him his first big league opportunity. He’s never been on the injured list outside of a two-week absence last summer due to a positive Covid-19 test.
  • Twins fans could get a look at some of the organization’s top prospects next month. Rosters can’t expand to the extent that they once did — only to 28 players — but manager Rocco Baldelli said this week in an appearance on MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM that the club will likely take a look at some promising youngsters when rosters expand (Twitter link, with audio). “I do think we could get a look at a few of these guys,” Baldelli said, though he declined to provide specific names. “I think there’s value in experience. … Calling guys up in September, giving them a little bit of that, I think helps.” Baldelli specifically pointed to the pitching staff, noting that there will be “some innings available” to the club’s upper-level pitchers. Speculatively speaking, that would seem to bode well for prospects such as Jordan Balazovic and Joe Ryan — the former a consensus top-100 arm and the latter a key arm acquired in the Nelson Cruz trade. Minnesota has given a few rookies some opportunities in the starting rotation this year — Griffin Jax and Charlie Barnes among them — but they’ve yet to promote any of their top-ranked prospects on the pitching side of things (in part due to injuries).

Players Avoiding Arbitration: 1/15/21

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The deadline to exchange arbitration figures is today at 1pm ET. As of this morning, there were 125 arbitration-eligible players who’d yet to agree to terms on their contract for the upcoming 2021 season. Arbitration is muddier than ever before thanks to the shortened 2020 schedule, which most believe will lead to record number of arb hearings this winter. Be that as it may, it’s still reasonable to expect dozens of contractual agreements to filter in over the next couple of hours.

We’ll highlight some of the more high-profile cases in separate posts with more in-depth breakdowns, but the majority of today’s dealings will be smaller-scale increases that don’t radically alter a team’s payroll or a player’s trade candidacy. As such, we’ll just run through most of today’s agreements in this post.

I’ve embedded MLBTR’s 2021 Arbitration Tracker in the post (those in the mobile app or viewing on mobile web will want to turn their phones sideways). Our tracker can be sorted by team, by service time and/or by Super Two status, allowing users to check the status on whichever groups of players they like. You can also check out Matt Swartz’s projected arbitration salaries for this year’s class, and we’ll do a quick sentence on each player’s agreement at the bottom of this post as well, with the most recent agreements sitting atop the list.

Today’s Agreements (chronologically, newest to oldest)

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Quick Hits: Keller, Straily, Lotte Giants, Neris, Red Sox

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Brad Keller posted a 2.47 ERA, 2.06 K/BB rate, 5.76 K/9, and 52.8% grounder rate over 54 2/3 innings this season, as the 25-year-old continues to establish himself as a front-of-the-rotation option for the Royals.  Keller was aided this season by an improved slider that essentially looked more like his fastball and moved like a curveball, as the right-hander told Fangraphs’ David Laurila.  The first step was remaking a slider delivery that initially left Keller unable to “see the plate because my front arm was covering the catcher….I was constantly pulling off on everything, yanking my front side.  I needed to clean that up and keep my shoulders more square.”

Working on advice from Royals pitching coach Cal Eldred during the league shutdown, Keller fixed his delivery and turned his slider into a prominent part of his arsenal.  38.2% of his pitches were sliders in 2020, well up from a 31.2% usage in 2019 and a 26.2% usage in 2018.  As per Fangraphs’ pitch value and slider runs above average (wSL) metrics, Keller had the third-most effective slider of any pitcher in baseball, behind only Dinelson Lamet and Zach Plesac.

More from around baseball as the Dodgers sit a game away from a championship…

  • Dan Straily’s first season in Korea was a success, and the right-hander tells Jeeho Yoo of Yonhap News that he has yet to make a decision about a potential second season with the KBO League’s Lotte Giants.  Before anything, Straily wants to return to the United States to see his family for the first time in nine months, as COVID-19 travel restrictions kept him in South Korea.  “I want to be with my wife when the decision starts coming up and my agent starts talking to the team about this,” Straily said.  After inking a one-year, $1MM contract with the Lotte Giants last winter, Straily posted a 2.50 ERA with 205 strikeouts over 194 2/3 innings, becoming arguably the league’s top pitcher and a popular figure with fans.  It was a solid rebound season after a tough 2019 for Straily that saw him allow 22 homers over only 47 2/3 innings with the Orioles, resulting in a 9.82 ERA.
  • The Phillies hold a $7MM club option on Hector Neris for 2021, which the team could see as an acceptable price tag for a reliever who has been generally solid over parts of seven MLB seasons.  However, in an offseason where the Phillies are dealing with revenue losses and trying to get under the luxury tax threshold, NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Corey Seidman sees Neris as a possible extension candidate.  Seidman floats the possibility of a two-year contract worth $9MM-$10MM, which seems like a good number from the Phils’ perspective, though it remains to be seen if Neris or his agents would accept such an offer.  The team has some leverage in the sense that Neris probably wouldn’t like to test the very uncertain 2020-21 free agent market, yet Neris might also have confidence that the Phillies wouldn’t actually decline his option since the Phils are in such dire need of bullpen help.
  • Chaim Bloom’s first year in charge of the Red Sox front office was a tumultuous one, and the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier looked beyond the unprecedented events (the pandemic’s effect on the season and the Mookie Betts trade) to examine patterns about how Bloom will shepherd the team going forward.  The Sox mostly targeted controllable players, and the sheer volume of transactions was also different, as the 2020 club had the most roster turnover of any Red Sox team of the past decade.  “It goes back to being more open-minded and willing to be more aggressive with the bottom end of our 40-man roster,” assistant GM Eddie Romero said.  “The 40-man roster became more of a living document.  It was a daily conversation.  It required daily upkeep.”

Royals’ Brad Keller To Make Season Debut Thursday

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Royals starter Brad Keller will make his season debut Thursday against the Cubs, manager Mike Matheny announced (via Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com). The right-hander has been behind schedule because of a positive coronavirus test.

The 25-year-old Keller is about to begin his third season as a member of the Royals, who grabbed him during the December 2017 Rule 5 Draft. While Rule 5 picks rarely turn into productive major leaguers, Keller has proved to be a steal for the Royals. He has totaled 2.0-plus fWAR in each of his two seasons in Kansas City, with which he has amassed 305 2/3 innings of 3.68 ERA/3.98 FIP pitching with 6.42 K/9, 3.53 BB/9 and a 52 percent groundball rate.

Getting Keller back won’t suddenly turn a 3-9 club into a a contender, but it should at least make KC more competitive. The Royals’ rotation hasn’t been particularly productive this year, but Danny Duffy and rookie Brady Singer have performed respectably over a combined six starts.

Brad Keller Returns To Royals Camp

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Right-hander Brad Keller is on his way back to Royals camp, MLB.com’s Jeffrey Flanagan was among those to report (Twitter link). He had been sidelined owing to a COVID-19 diagnosis.

Fortunately, it seems Keller has emerged from his infection without any significant complications. While he hasn’t yet provided any detail regarding his situation, it seems fair to presume he is in good health since he’s now ready to get back to work on the ballfield. Keller had to clear two negative tests before he was able to return.

If the Royals are to mount a surprise run at the postseason in 2020, they’ll need Keller to be at his best. Soon to turn 25, Keller carries a rather nice 3.68 ERA through 305 2/3 MLB frames over the past two seasons.

Though he has averaged a modest 6.4 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9 to this point in his MLB career, the sinker-baller has more than good fortune to cite for his success. Keller owns a 52.0% lifetime groundball rate and 0.65 HR/9 rate to date, both notable numbers in this era of the long ball.

If Keller can continue to tamp down on the dingers, he’ll keep delivering big value to the organization and set himself up for a nice payday as a first-time arbitration-eligible player. Even if he settles in as a back-of-the-rotation starter, Keller already rates as a Rule 5 heist.

Brad Keller, Ryan O’Hearn Test Positive For Coronavirus

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Royals right-hander Brad Keller and first baseman Ryan O’Hearn have tested positive for the coronavirus, per the team. Keller said in a statement that is dealing with minor symptoms at the moment, while O’Hearn is asymptomatic. They’ll both need a pair of negative tests before they’re cleared to return to the team. For now, they’ll isolate as they await those negative tests. Keller and O’Hearn join Salvador Perez as known Royals players to have tested positive in the early days of Summer Camp.

The hope is obviously that both will make swift recoveries and be ready when games begin later this month, although there’s no way of knowing when either will be cleared. Keller, 25 later this month, is a lock for the Royals rotation and served as their Opening Day starter a year ago. The former Rule 5 pick tossed 165 1/3 frames of 4.19 ERA ball over the course of 28 starts for Kansas City this past season.

O’Hearn, who’ll turn 27 in late July, had a big Spring Training before the league shutdown and was competing with Ryan McBroom for regular reps at first base. There’s an obvious platoon pairing between the two if the organization sees fit, but both are looking at the 2020 season as a hopeful proving grounds. O’Hearn posted a monstrous .262/.353/.597 slash (153 wRC+) in 170 plate appearances in 2018 but saw his production decline precipitously in 2019 (.195/.281/.369).

Have The Royals Found Another Rule 5 Gem?

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After selecting Joakim Soria out of the Padres’ farm system in the 2006 Rule 5 Draft, it could be argued that the Royals are still in the “playing with house money” honeymoon phase of the Rule 5 process.  After all, even landing a Rule 5 player who can stick on a Major League roster for an entire season is a success, never mind landing a two-time All-Star like Soria through his 2007-11 heyday as Kansas City’s closer.

Eleven years after drafting Soria, it seems like the Royals again struck gold via the Rule 5 process.  While Brad Keller has yet to reach All-Star levels, the right-hander has already enjoyed enough success over his first two MLB seasons that he looks like a solid building block for a young K.C. team.

Keller was an eighth-round pick for the Diamondbacks in the 2013 draft, and through five pro seasons had compiled some decent but unspectacular numbers in the Arizona farm system.  Over 130 1/3 innings for Double-A Jackson in 2017, Keller posted a 4.68 ERA, 7.6 K/9, and 1.95 K/BB rate, which wasn’t quite good enough for him to make the grade amidst something of a 40-man roster crunch for the D’Backs.

Coming off a 93-win season and a NLDS appearance in 2017, the Diamondbacks were focused on using much of their available 40-man spaces on players who could potentially provide immediate help in 2018, as GM Mike Hazen explained to the Arizona Republic’s Nick Piecoro two years ago.  “Our scouts liked [Keller]. We liked him,” Hazen said.  “We made the conscious decision not to add him because of where he was in proximity to the Major League team, where we were in the cycle, what we wanted to use our 40-man spots for, we wanted to be aggressive in the offseason in claiming guys…that were closer to the big leagues in our mind.”

So, the D’Backs left Keller unprotected in December 2017 draft, and it didn’t take long for another team to pounce on the right-hander.  However, that other team wasn’t actually the Royals, whose spot in the Rule 5 draft order didn’t fall until the #18 spot that year.  Instead it was the Reds who took Keller with the fifth pick, and then promptly dealt him to Kansas City for cash considerations.  (The Royals swung a similar move just one pick later, acquiring sixth pick Burch Smith for cash from the Mets after New York selected Smith out of Tampa Bay’s farm system.)

Smith also ended up spending the entire 2018 season on the K.C. roster, though he was cut loose after posting a 6.92 ERA over 78 innings.  Keller, on the other hand, was much more of an immediate success.  After posting a 2.01 ERA over his first 22 1/3 frames of work out of Kansas City’s bullpen in 2018, Keller was promoted to the rotation and continued to succeed.  The righty had a 3.28 ERA over his 20 starts, striking out 83 batters (against 43 walks) over 118 innings.

Keller’s sophomore year wasn’t quite as impressive, though he still managed a quite respectable 4.19 ERA, 1.74 K/BB, and 6.6 K/9 over 165 1/3 frames, all as a member of the Royals rotation.  It could be argued that Keller was perhaps fortunate to manage that 4.19 mark, as some ERA predictors (4.94 xFIP, 5.23 SIERA) were significantly higher, and batters made much more solid contract off him in 2019 than in 2018.  The Statcast metrics also took a dim view of Keller’s 2019 performance, with a whole lot of blue — as in, below-average — numbers for Keller in comparison to other pitchers in exit velocity, xwOBA, strikeout percentage, and several other categories.

That said, advanced metrics don’t tend to favor low-strikeout hurlers like Keller who specialize in keeping the ball on the ground.  Among pitchers with at least 300 innings tossed over the last two seasons, Keller has the lowest (8.4%) home run rate in baseball, and the second-highest (52%) grounder rate.  These outstanding numbers are particularly valuable in this era of the lively ball, and Keller could further benefit from some improved defense behind him, should Maikel Franco provide any sort of upgrade at third base.

All told, 4.8 fWAR over two seasons already represents a very nice return on the Royals’ initial minor cash outlay to Cincinnati.  Keller doesn’t turn 25 until July, and he doesn’t reach arbitration eligibility until this coming offseason, putting him under the Royals’ control through the 2023 campaign.  Under normal circumstances, Keller could be a player the Royals might have already locked up to a contract extension, and while all extension talks are halted under the current transactions freeze, it wouldn’t be a surprise if K.C. began some talks with Keller’s representatives once regular business gets back underway.

While truly major Rule 5 Draft success stories are relatively few and far between these days, a team only needs to hit on one pick to make the enterprise worthwhile.  Finding a big league talent for virtually nothing is a win for any team, and if that talent is a mid-20’s starting pitcher who looks like he can hang in at least the middle of a big league rotation, the Royals got a valuable boost to their latest rebuilding effort.

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