White Sox taking cautious approach with Keuchel in Cactus League
Dallas Keuchel was on cruise control last season, his first in a White Sox uniform.
Heading into a Sept. 6 start against the Royals, the veteran lefty was 5-2 with a 2.42 ERA and 0.98 WHIP pitching behind ace Lucas Giolito in the Sox's rotation.
Keuchel kept the roll going with 5 scoreless innings against Kansas City, but he had to make an early exit with back spasms.
He returned to the mound two weeks later, but the layoff bothered Keuchel and it showed in the playoffs, when he lasted just 3⅓ innings in Game 2 while allowing 5 runs (3 earned) against the Athletics.
Hoping to avoid a similar scenario this season, the White Sox have been easing Keuchel in. The 33-year-old pitcher makes his first Cactus League start on Thursday vs. the Royals.
"You want to get to the season and be as healthy as you can," Sox manager Tony La Russa said. "This guy really knows what he's doing, manipulates the baseball, he threw 3 innings the other day in a simulated game. He gets 3 (Cactus League) starts so I think it works for him being healthy and he'll be sharp enough because he's smart."
Keuchel is all for getting a late start in exhibition play and making a quicker ramp up.
"This is probably the first time in a long while that I've really felt like myself," Keuchel said. "That's the plus side. We kind of mapped out just a few starts in spring for me because of the lack of a full season last year and that I sat out half a year before that. So this will be my first full year in about two years.
"I'm not trying to push it in spring training. I'm trying to make sure that I'm there in September and October. I feel great, though. This is an exciting time. I've got to remember that I'm not trying to go 9 innings in spring training."
Before making 11 starts for the Sox in last year's short season, Keuchel missed the first three months of 2019 as a free agent before joining the Braves.
In the first season of a three-year, $55.5 million contract with the White Sox, Keuchel was 6-2 and his 1.99 ERA was the third best in the major leagues.
"I do draw some good and bad from last year," he said. "The bad was missing that start with the back issue but along the lines I did feel like myself in certain starts."
Feeling strong and looking forward to a full 162-game season, Keuchel expects to be even better than he was last year.
"I feel in a physical state now where I can do anything I want," Keuchel said. "I think you're going to see some more breaking balls early for strikes and some put-away pitches, which I haven't had in a few years. So that's what's got me kind of excited right now at this point in time. Moving forward, I would assume that it's going to be kind of the same process. There's going to be some more breaking balls early in the games, which is going to afford me later in the season to kind of come back and have my fastball command and have a lot of fastballs thrown through the course of the game, maybe get a lot more groundballs than strikeouts."