Dallas Keuchel's ERA spiked to an even 5.00 after his disastrous inning-plus against the Cubs on Friday. In a rotation where nobody else's ERA begins with a "4," and even Reynaldo López's begins with a "1," Keuchel can't really find anybody else to blame but himself.
“I have been the weakest starter in the rotation for much of the year,” he said Saturday. “It’s really kind of mind-boggling sometimes, the one or two mistake pitches that I make in the course of these games. Just thinking back to Oakland, I walked a couple of guys and it was a single that really did me in. So, if I take away some of the self-made mistakes, we are looking at a totally different five, six, last 10 starts. My last 10 starts have been ugly, to say the least. So, you take away one or two pitches here and there and you are looking at a different dynamic, but physically I feel great. I’m trying to right this thing in September and make some adjustments and hopefully, we are sitting here talking about a lot of wins, instead of a lot of pitiful performances.”
Keuchel's ERA is the sixth-worst in baseball among qualifying pitchers, but the last three words deserve weight. It takes a certain amount of talent to qualify for the ERA title -- 162 innings in a season -- and that shouldn't be overlooked when discussing Keuchel's future.
If that argument sounds familiar, because it's the same thing I said about John Danks at various parts over the last decade.
FROM SHOP TALK: Where are they now? Catching up with John Danks
In the three full seasons he pitched after shoulder capsule surgery, Danks posted a 4.73 ERA while throwing over 500 innings. He had the second-worst ERA of any qualifying pitcher over that stretch ... but only 54 pitchers qualified over that stretch. The fact that he provided the White Sox 170 innings a year meant he had achieved a default level of success, even though it was the kind of success that wasn't visible from start to start.
Obviously Danks wasn't a good MLB pitcher after the surgery. He was among the worst qualifying pitchers, in fact. However, it takes a certain amount of talent to qualify. Worse pitchers are chewed up and spit out well before they can start amassing the necessary innings. That ended up being Danks' chief task, protecting Sox fans from getting (un)healthier doses of Hector Noesi, Andre Rienzo and Scott Carroll, even if few appreciated it. I'd call it a thankless job -- pitching well enough to allow people to forget worse pitchers, but pitching poorly enough to make them hate you instead -- but $65 million makes that cross a little lighter.
Erik Johnson was the White Sox's first idea to replace Danks, although Miguel Gonzalez ended up stepping into that rotation spot without issue. Then Mat Latos gave way, Johnson and some other guy were traded to San Diego for James Shields, and the rest of the season showed how you don't take a 4.73 ERA in the fifth spot of the rotation for granted, even if you're tired of looking at that starter's face.
We've reached the same point with Keuchel, with fans wondering how quickly he can be cut even without a firm line of succession in mind.
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It's natural to think about Keuchel's future, if only because it would certainly say something about his place on the White Sox if he's left off the postseason roster. I maintain that it would be no grave insult, but a mere recognition of the difference between regular-season baseball and its October counterpart.
Mark Buehrle was left off Toronto's postseason roster in his final year despite posting a 3.81 ERA over 198⅔ innings for the Blue Jays in 2015. Buehrle wanted to pitch in October, but he expressed an understanding of how the situation worked against him. He faded down the stretch, and somebody with his profile didn't figure to be a weapon out of the bullpen.
"They've already talked to me. It's tough, it sucks. But I understand the situation," Buehrle said.
"I haven't been feeling the greatest the last month and we've got four guys that have been throwing the spit out of the ball. And they're going to take it and run with this.
"I'll be ready if something happens, hopefully it doesn't. But if something happens to one of those guys and they need me in the second round or the World Series if we get that far, I'm going to be ready, do everything I can."
Unfortunately for Buehrle, October baseball, just like Hall of Fame cases, has evolved to emphasize peak performance over longevity, and so Buehrle didn't appear on either of the Jays' postseason rosters in the two rounds they played.
That didn't diminish Buehrle's impact on the season, or his three years with Toronto. Buehrle's value was providing the 32 starts during the six-month grind, and good luck finding anybody as reliable. The White Sox learned that when they chose Danks over Buehrle, only to see Danks' shoulder give out in the first year of the five-year contract he signed. Danks had to reinvent himself as a poor man's Buehrle, and the subsequent scrambling to find adequacy in his stead after he gave way shows that even a lesser version of a workhorse is hard to replace when it comes to the big-picture goal of getting 162 starts from the fewest number of pitchers.
Just like 2016, the White Sox don't have an abundance of starter-grade options in their system, especially if Carlos Rodón finds a better opportunity elsewhere. After Lucas Giolito, Lance Lynn and Dylan Cease, there's a hodgepodge of talent, some of which is more promising that Keuchel, but none of which is a lock to deliver on it.
While Michael Kopech looked overqualified to be limited to an inning at a time over the first few months of the season, he's suddenly subject to random rockings over the last several weeks. Kopech gave up five runs in an inning to Cleveland on July 31. He took a more ordinary loss in Oakland on Aug. 19 due to a Matt Olson homer, but then gave up another five runs in one inning against Toronto a week later. His fellow bullpenmate-with-starter-aspirations Garrett Crochet has thrown three innings exactly once in his pro career, and he went on the injured list afterward.
At Triple-A, Jonathan Stiever failed to retire any of the four MLB batters he faced this year, and his season is over due to lat surgery. Jimmy Lambert hasn't thrown a single quality start at the Triple-A level, whether due to ineffectiveness or delicate handling. Kade McClure showed signs of growth at Birmingham, but the environment at Charlotte that has ruined everybody else's stats is wasting no time trying to demoralize him (10.80 ERA, four homers over 13⅓ innings). None of these pitchers can be written off, but they have work remaining in the minors.
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And then there's López. Prior to his reinvention as a fastball-slider force who can used at any point in the game, he had posted a 5.52 ERA over 41 starts between 2019 and 2020. If the White Sox non-tendered him after the season, it wouldn't have come as a complete shock, even if 80 percent of the GMs in the Offseason Plan Project decided to keep him in the fold for at least one more year.
There were a few reasons to write off López, whether due to his lagging velocity, his lack of a dynamite secondary pitch, or the lack of a clear path to solving either. When he showed up to spring training with a shorter armswing but the same results, I didn't expect to see him delivering bail-out performances at the end of the summer.
In López's defense, he had just delivered 180-plus good innings three years prior, and 180-plus bad innings two years ago. As Danks showed, there's some level of accomplishment simply in having amassed those innings, no matter how unimpressive or costly the construction process.
FROM SHOP TALK: Unpacking Reynaldo López's good start to 2021
That's where I am with Keuchel. You certainly have to be on guard for second-half struggles foreshadowing a lousier start to 2022. Forget thriving -- it's hard enough to survive with a fastball below 90 mph, and baseball makes a habit of seeking and destroying the exceptions to its rules. The game never smoked out Buehrle, but there's a reason why he looks like the last of his kind.
Still, just like you can find people wanting Keuchel shipped out, you can find tweets from White Sox fans demanding the DFA of López, and where would the White Sox be without him now?
(Still in first place, but with significantly more cringing.)
It's an uneasy existence, but if Keuchel doesn't improve between now and the end of the season, the immediate future seems pretty clear -- no postseason roster spot, but a season-opening spot in the 2022 rotation while the Sox try to line up three reasonable options to run with an audition down the line. Whether he's given the rest of the season to straighten himself out or whether López gets a chance to stretch out in September, I'm more concerned that Keuchel can contribute something to the 2022 roster at this point. The regular season is always longer than you think, and tends to necessitate contributions from the last people you'd think of turning to. I typically don't recommend reducing the amount of options until their performances make it utterly inescapable.
(Photo by Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports)
