The Pirates won’t have Mitch Keller back on the mound before the 2026 season is over, but they did get a meaningful update on one of the arms that matters most to their 2027 plans.
Keller stayed home for Pittsburgh’s final series in Detroit, yet he said he feels really good as he works back from the teres major injury that ended his season in August. The bigger takeaway is what comes next: he expects a semi-normal offseason in terms of throwing and building back up.
For Pittsburgh, that’s a pretty big deal.
The numbers from Keller’s 2026 season were rough. He went 6-8 with a 5.29 ERA and 1.375 WHIP in 22 starts and 115 2/3 innings, with 89 strikeouts and 42 walks.
His 84 ERA+ and 4.55 FIP painted the same picture - a year that fell well short of expectations. But the Pirates also felt the other side of the equation when he was gone.
Even a down season from Keller still came with something the rotation badly missed: reliability.
Before this year, he had made 31 starts and thrown 178 innings in 2024, then followed that with 32 starts and 176 1/3 innings in 2025. He had become the kind of pitcher Pittsburgh could pencil in every fifth day and count on to carry a heavy workload.
Once that went away, the cracks showed fast.
Braxton Ashcraft eventually landed on the injured list. Jared Jones came back, but his workload had to be managed. By September, the Pirates were stitching together rotation spots with bullpen games and bulk innings from Khristian Curtis, Wilber Dotel and Antwone Kelly.
That context makes Keller’s offseason status more important than his ERA alone suggests. He obviously has to be better in 2027, especially as a pitcher entering the fourth season of a five-year, $77 million contract. But Pittsburgh doesn’t need him to be the headliner anymore.
Paul Skenes, Jones, Ashcraft and Bubba Chandler have changed that picture. What the Pirates need from Keller now is steadiness: 30 starts, 170-plus innings and solid major-league work in the middle of the rotation.
The club found out this season how quickly a rotation that looks deep can turn thin. That’s why Keller getting to the offseason without a major rehab hanging over him matters. For a Pirates team that has already missed the postseason and figures to have little patience left for excuses in 2027, having its veteran innings-eater back on a normal track could mean a lot more than the disappointing 2026 line would suggest.
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