{"id":670927,"date":"2026-04-08T21:08:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/670927\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T21:08:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:08:22","slug":"mitch-keller-continues-stellar-start-to-2026-season-in-pirates-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/670927\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitch Keller Continues Stellar Start To 2026 Season In Pirates Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mitch Keller remained sharp in a losing effort for the <a href=\"https:\/\/sportsnetpittsburgh.com\/pittsburgh-pirates\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Pittsburgh fell 8-2 to the San Diego Padres despite receiving a gem from its starting pitcher. Keller blanked the Padres across six innings, tallying four strikeouts while allowing three singles and a walk at PNC Park.<\/p>\n<p>The Pirates veteran lowered his season ERA to 1.00, permitting just two runs in three starts. It&#8217;s quite the improvement from last year, as Keller relinquished seven runs in the second outing of his 2025 campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Keller was cruising on Wednesday with help from a sweeper that generated <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/baseballsavant.mlb.com\/gamefeed?date=4\/8\/2026&amp;gamePk=823403&amp;chartType=pitch&amp;legendType=pitchName&amp;playerType=pitcher&amp;inning=&amp;count=&amp;pitchHand=&amp;batSide=&amp;descFilter=&amp;ptFilter=&amp;resultFilter=&amp;hf=playerBreakdown&amp;sportId=1&amp;liveAb=77#823403\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">six whiffs <\/a>and a 62.3-mph average exit velocity on seven batted balls. But Pirates manager Don Kelly removed him for Justin Lawrence in the seventh with the game tied at 0-0.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly said after the game, per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette&#8217;s <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/colin_beazley\/status\/2041964668122497054\" rel=\"nofollow\">Colin Beazley<\/a>, that\u00a0Keller&#8217;s pitch cap for Wednesday was 85. He also liked the matchups for Lawrence, who limited fellow right-handers to a .394 OPS last season.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the move backfired. The Padres scored four runs off Lawrence and four more runs against Jose Urquidy in the eighth. San Diego starter Michael King allowed two runs in the seventh, but Kyle Hart, Jeremiah Estrada and Pittsburgh native Mason Miller stopped the bleeding with three combined scoreless innings.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s already the second time Keller has tossed six shutout frames in a Pirates loss this season. A lack of support is familiar to the 30-year-old, who went 6-15 last year despite delivering 17 quality starts.<\/p>\n<p>Keller is slated to make his next turn against the Washington Nationals on Tuesday. The Pirates will first play the Chicago Cubs in a three-game series at Wrigley Field.<\/p>\n<p>More MLB:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/sportsnetpittsburgh.com\/pittsburgh-pirates\/news\/how-pirates-paul-skenes-reacted-konnor-griffins-extension\/268e0df351648571841aaf77\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">How Pirates&#8217; Paul Skenes Reacted To Konnor Griffin&#8217;s Historic Extension<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mitch Keller remained sharp in a losing effort for the Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday. Pittsburgh fell 8-2 to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,4,10,776,64,4297],"class_list":{"0":"post-670927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-pirates","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-pirates","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","13":"tag-pittsburghpirates"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116371135680055222","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}