The Table Setter, Feb. 7, 2024: You Gotta Pick Your Battles, Man

When I was in high school, the introspective, slightly geeky, not-quite-sensitive white male stand-up comedian was a demographic in full flower. Jim Gaffigan first hit his stride right in there. So did Mike Birbiglia, who might be most famous to baseball fans for his bit about being an on-stage guest at MLB's awards banquet one winter.

My favorite Birbiglia joke, though, is from a motif he created to fire off easy one-liners, called his "secret public journal". It's like Jimmy Fallon's thank-you notes bit on The Tonight Show, only funny.

Anyway, Birbiglia pretends to write in his diary thusly: "I notice rappers these days are all very angry about stuff. They'll be like, 'Yo, it's 2006, motherf-----!' And I'm all, 'You're mad about the date? You gotta pick your battles, man.'"

It's probably funnier, ironically, in audio form, and it's probably not all that funny anyway, but I think about it roughly three times a week and laugh out loud at least one or two of those times. Again, this was 20 years ago.

All that to say this: You've gotta pick your battles, man. Here's what I mean.

Mitch Keller Can't Help You, Pittsburgh
One utterly unsurprising but theoretically important revelation that came of the release of PECOTA's projected standings yesterday was the fact that the Pirates are pretty well locked into the cellar of the NL Central for another year. Sure, they have some intriguing young talent, and that kind of team can always be a surprise fighter. The Pirates themselves were in first place as late as mid-June last season, before cratering. 

That was amid a divisional power vacuum, though, and it would be a surprise if such a suck-hole recurred this year. The Cardinals bolstered their rotation this winter and are projected to get back to the right side of .500, where they've perched for the other 30 of the last 31 years. The Cubs still figure to make at least one significant move to get better, and are already seven games ahead of Pittsburgh in the projected standings. The Reds and Brewers are each five games ahead, with young players at least as capable of having huge years as any of the Pirates'. It's time to admit that, for another year, there's really no path to meaningful contention for Pittsburgh.

In light of that, they ought to change their minds about trading Mitch Keller, and try to get a haul for him that exceeds what the division rivals from Milwaukee just landed in exchange for Corbin Burnes. Keller is two years from free agency, but is about to spend the less expensive, more valuable of the two pitching for a losing team that needs a big change in order to climb out of the long-term hole they're in within their division.

As it happens, Keller is about as great a fit for the Twins as you could hope to find. He's a poor man's--maybe a lower-middle-class man's--Pablo López, circa this time a year ago. He throws six different pitches, and his arsenal is almost that deep when you divide it up by handedness. To lefties, he really does use all six offerings at least 5 percent of the time, and the four-seamer, cutter, curve, and sweeper are all over 10 percent. To righties, it's a little more stripped-down, because it can be. He's sinker-sweeper-cutter-fastball against them, and that was good enough for a 19.5 K-BB% last year. Righties only managed a .286 wOBA against him.

There are definitely some changes the Twins would make with Keller, but he also already does some things they love. For instance, the heavy sweeper usage would fit gorgeously with the way they do things. No team in baseball threw more sweepers than did the Twins last year. Only 34 pitchers threw at least 100 sweepers to opposite-handed batters (which usually isn't a good idea, but more on that in a moment), but four of them were: Griffin Jax (one of several relievers on the list, here because a reliever can get away with and is limited to throwing an imperfect shape of breaker to opposite-handed batters), at 247; López, at 203; and two guys tied with 198: Sonny Gray and Keller.

Gray allowed the lowest wOBA to (in his case) lefty hitters on the sweeper of any of those qualifying hurlers. He dominated with it. Keller wasn't much worse, though. He frequently landed it as a somewhat unfair backdoor breaker, and with the horizontal movement of a sweeper like his, the command to do that to the arm side of the plate is both impressive and almost impossible to combat.

That's just one example; you get the idea. Keller would be a superb fit for the Twins, whom we well know to like acquiring pitchers with two years of team control left, rather than confining themselves to one or paying a sometimes vapid premium for three-plus. We saw that with Gray, and with López, and with Tyler Mahle. We saw it with Jake Odorizzi. Keller, like each of those players, is also a great fit for their pitching predilections, and he'd slot in as the team's No. 2 even before they go to work on the kind of transformation they would hope to help him make, à la López.

The price tag would be considerable, and painful. It might include Emmanuel Rodríguez, and either Marco Raya or David Festa. Keller is good and the Pirates aren't yet cornered into moving him. Still, it'd be a fun deal, and it wouldn't automatically take the Twins out of the running for the final position-player piece they would still like to add to the roster. He's only set to make $5.4425 million this year, as he and the Bucs agreed to avoid arbitration at that number. (Yes, that means the team negotiated down to the hundreds column on the deal. The dictionary definition of 'Nutting' is 'nickel-and-diming your way to the bottom of your division every year'. Don't look it up.)

While not the sexiest name the Twins could have pursued this winter, nor one likely to be available at a bargain price, Keller could be a difference-maker. He's the Iowan Pablo López, really. It didn't take López long to find a new gear with Minnesota. Keller could toe the rubber in Game 2 of a playoff series this fall and inspire plenty of confidence--as long as someone goes and wrests him from the hands of a team with no chance of getting that far.

Hit me. Mitch Keller takes, prospect clutching and clawing, favorite Mike Birbiglia jokes. Let's talk baseball. And I apologize for the Bob Nutting jokes, even as I insist they are his own fault. If ever a family could afford a simple name change...

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