It was far from the best of days for Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Mitch Keller. Many were hoping to see some progress this season for the 24-year-old from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but it just hasn’t happened so far this spring, and his outing yesterday in a 10-9 defeat to the Tampa Bay Rays was one of his worst.
Keller was shellacked, finishing the game with an ugly line of 8 credited runs off of 10 hits and 3 walks in two innings of action. Keller struck out just a single batter and simply didn’t have it from the start, as the Bucs were down 3-0 in the blink of an eye and that wasn’t even the worst of it, as Keller gave up a homer in the second and two more in the third before being pulled.