Dallas Keuchel's ugly start on Tuesday hurt him in two ways.
There's the matter that he became just the second White Sox pitcher to allow 10 runs while recording three outs, and the other start occurred back in 1934. It's the worst start of his career, it put his staff in an awful position with a minimum of 15 innings left to cover of a doubleheader, and now his ERA stands at a disturbing, distended 16.50. It's rough when Manny Bañuelos going 0-for-10 in his attempts to record the third out of of the third inning back in 2019 looks three times as good.
But it's not great news for his attempt to reach 160 innings, which would turn his $20 million club option for 2023 into a guaranteed fourth year. He started out needing to average 5⅓ innings over 30 starts in order to reach that threshold. Now that average is 5½, because this start was practically a missed start in terms of accruing a workload.
In terms of likelihood, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of use fixating on that 160 innings. It's reminiscent of Kelvin Herrera needing 21 games for his 2021 option to vest, only to see the White Sox cut him after two. Those were the last two games he pitched in the big leagues, so the Sox could not be accused of shenanigans.
With Keuchel, it's more that he occupies this weird space where both pitching too well and pitching too poorly generates cause for concern. A start like this simplifies matters by obliterating the concept of "pitching too well," and now the hunt for adequacy is on.
Keuchel's postgame comments could be read as tone-deaf:
Keuchel was charged with a career high 10 runs (eight earned). He struck out one batter and walked none. Despite the awful line that launched his ERA to 16.50 over two starts, Keuchel knew he deserved better.
“Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you really haven’t,” Keuchel said.
Keuchel felt like he made only two bad pitches, one of them a cutter to Ramirez that was ripped for the Indians’ third slam of the young season.
“I’ll take nine singles and a blast,” Keuchel said. “Three hard hit balls all day. First pitch swings, ground balls, I mean, really all I wanted.”
To me, there's equal parts truth and denial. Sure, any luck-reliant argument lost a lot of its weight when Tanner Banks replaced Keuchel and threw four perfect innings.
Yet the premise of a Keuchel start is well understood. Everybody needs to make the most of his first 50 pitches, because everything that happens afterward could unravel in a hurry. Had Keuchel been backed by even a pedestrian defensive showing, he would've been through four batters on eight pitches:
- Myles Straw, 88.3 mph grounder on the first pitch
- Ernie Clement, 79 mph grounder on the fourth pitch
- José Ramírez, 76.5 mph flyout on the second pitch
- Gabriel Arias, 64.6 mph grounder on the first pitch
Instead, thanks to the defensive showing, it was still only the second inning when the loud contact arrived, and Keuchel never escaped it.
Not giving Keuchel even the most elemental form of defensive support is like forgetting flour when baking a cake: It doesn't stand a chance of holding up.
There may be a time to consider cutting Keuchel, but it's not after a two-start sample that's tainted by the worst game of Tim Anderson's career. He may not be distinguishing himself from Banks, Jimmy Lambert or Vince Velasquez, but the White Sox currently have nobody else behind Banks, Lambert and Velasquez.
Now, if a three-start sample looks similar to this two-pack, the White Sox could be closer to a critical mass of legitimate alternatives. Johnny Cueto starts for Charlotte on Saturday and Lucas Giolito returns to the White Sox rotation on Sunday. I wouldn't pencil in Cueto for starts until he shows what he has -- there are reminders of Sox fans wanting Tim Lincecum to replace John Danks in 2016 when both were toast -- but it's better to have him in the fold than not.
In the meantime, Keuchel won't start for another four days, which gives everybody ample time to recenter their concerns over an offense with a team .613 OPS, and figuring out how much of that is the function of an environment where five teams were shut out on Wednesday, and the Sox somehow weren't one of them.
