After brief look at Mitch Keller, Pirates drop decision to Cubs

The Pittsburgh Pirates are counting on Mitch Keller to prop up a starting rotation that has been retooled seriously after the trades of Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon and an injury to Steven Brault.

But the first look at Keller in a game that mattered was a brief one Sunday. Short outings are not unusual for starting pitchers early in the season, but Keller contributed to his early exit when he had trouble consistently locating the strike zone.

He threw 77 pitches in only three innings — 31 in the first — and allowed the Chicago Cubs to get a running start toward their 4-3 victory at Wrigley Field.

The Cubs, who recorded only three hits Sunday, won two of three games in the teams’ season-opening series.

Keller’s problem is obvious to manager Derek Shelton. Keller, who walked four, struck out four and allowed three runs on only two hits, sees it, too.

“He just has to get the ball in the strike zone more,” the manager said.

The thinking goes that if Keller can find the zone, his repertoire of pitches — including a slider that he said keeps getting better — will help him get through innings.

“Every time I’ve been out there, I’ve been feeling better mechanically, better stuff-wise,” Keller said. “I feel like I’m really close to being really good. You just have to attack the zone and fill it up more and get ahead in counts.

“I wasn’t nibbling. I just didn’t have it.”

He said the problem isn’t mental.

“I know what I need to do. I’m not pressing,” he said. “It’s all going to come through reps. The more times I do it, the more times I can experience it and know what works and doesn’t work.”

Keller ended last season by throwing 11 consecutive hitless innings, but the Cubs stopped that streak in the first when Kris Bryant drove in a run with a single that was clocked by Statcast at 107.5 mph.

The hit was the least of Keller’s concerns while the Cubs were taking a 2-0 lead. He walked two of the first three batters — Ian Happ and Anthony Rizzo — and both scored. Joc Pederson’s RBI ground ball knocked in the Cubs’ second run.

In the third inning, Keller also walked two, but this time they didn’t score. Keller’s problem in that inning was a slider Happ drove over the center-field wall for a home run. The ball came off Happ’s bat at 108.2 mph and traveled 428 feet.

Keller, who pitched in front of his wife and four other family members on his 25th birthday, said the slider served him well through most of his outing, except that time.

“I hung that one to Happ that he did what he’s supposed to do on a mistake pitch,” Keller said. “He got it.”

Shelton liked the way his team recovered from the early 3-0 deficit, stopping one run short of a comeback.

“They continued to grind. We gave ourselves opportunities,” he said.

The Pirates played most of the series without third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, who went on the injured list with a strained left wrist he hurt in the first inning Saturday.

The Pirates might have felt Hayes’ absence in the sixth after Bryant led off with a double. Two batters later, replacement third baseman Phillip Evans, playing in with a runner on third, allowed Javier Baez’s 98.5-mph groundball to get past him for an error and the Cubs’ fourth run.

“I’ve been doing a lot of work on the other side of the diamond (first base),” Evans said. “It was kind of nice to be back at third base.

“I was out of position as it is,” he said of Baez’s smash. “We were holding the runner on third base. One of those in-between hot shots that you get. I was hoping it was going to hop up … but it stayed down.”

The Pirates scored twice in the sixth on Colin Moran’s two-run homer, and they added a run in the eighth on Evans’ RBI single. He ended the day 3 for 4.

But Gregory Polanco bounced into an inning-ending double play. Polanco stranded 13 runners in the three games.

“We had an opportunity in the eighth,” Shelton said, “and Polanco smokes the ball into a double play (99.4 mph).”

Shelton turned to his bullpen for the final five innings, and five pitchers allowed only one hit.

“They continue to minimize damage and keep us in games,” he said.

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