For the next five seconds, I want you to close your eyes and think about Dallas Keuchel. Seriously. I mean, really think. Now, what things, specifically, came to mind? Physically, perhaps you envisioned the one thing that makes him most recognizable amongst his peers: The Beard! If not his physical attributes, then perhaps you envisioned some of his esteemed accomplishments, up to and including his 2015 AL Cy Young Award, earned by way of receiving 22 of 30 possible first-place votes. If not his accomplishments, then perhaps you envisioned all he did to stifle the Yankees lineup in last year’s wild card duel in the Bronx, and the sumptuous fact that he’ll have a chance to do it all over again on April 5. If not his wild card brilliance, then perhaps you envisioned a few of the numbers that make him so gosh darn effective, including his 59.2% ground-ball rate, 36.9% soft-contact rate and 25.1% miss rate — each better than the vast majority of professional baseball throwers last year.
If any of these things came to mind, then you undoubtedly know a little something about Dallas Keuchel. You also know a little something about what makes him one of the best pitchers on the planet. (Maybe not so much the beard, granted, though that’s certainly an added bonus.) Of course, the thing of it is, Keuchel wasn’t always one of the best pitchers on the planet. Statistically speaking, it’s taken a lot for him to get here. It’s required command refinement. It’s required walk reduction. It’s required dinger avoidance. It’s required, perhaps most importantly, avoiding the heart of the plate. In other words, these are the types of things we would expect for a former run-of-the-mill starter to vault himself into the stratosphere of pitching royalty, because these are the types of things we look for when we attempt to explain a striking mid-career turnaround of such magnitude. But maybe we’re forgetting something. Something important. Something that can’t be ignored any longer.
That something? Defense. Above, you’ll see a visual representation of Keuchel’s growth in this area, by season, since breaking into the big leagues in 2012. The metric shown here is Defensive Runs Saved, developed by Baseball Info Solutions, which attempts to quantify how many runs Keuchel saved himself (and, hence, the Astros) strictly based off his glove-work. DRS is an extension of BIS’ plus-minus system, which attempts to answer the very simple question of how many plays a particular fielder made above or below an average player at his position. This takes into account batted ball velocity, hit location, hit trajectory and accounts for defensive positioning, and has transformed into one of the leading metrics by which many big-league clubs value defense. Of course, there’s not a lot of talk about DRS relating to pitchers, because by definition, a pitchers’ primary job is to, well, pitch.
Which brings us back to Keuchel, and the simple fact that he flashed some serious ability with the leather of late. Last season, Keuchel saved 13 runs with his glove, and that was by far and away the best mark of any pitcher with any amount of innings to his resume. His plus-minus runs above average (a simplified version of DRS) of 12 was four runs better than the next-best pitcher (8, Jake Arrieta), additionally. Of course, as we can see, most of this appeared to be an extension of 2014, which many consider to be Keuchel’s ‘breakout’. Two years ago, he also led all pitchers with 10 defensive runs saved, three better than the next closest of his competitors (7, Clayton Kershaw). Throw that all together and Keuchel has staved off 23 runs with his glove alone over the past two years, nine more than Zack Greinke‘s next-best 14. So I guess it makes sense why he’s won back-to-back Gold Gloves.
Again, though, Keuchel wasn’t always the poster child for defensively-gifted baseball throwers. Just like his pitching ability, he’s come a long way in this respect. You’ll see that as a rookie, Keuchel didn’t save himself a single run defensively over 85.1 innings. Why, you ask? Perhaps it had to do with his ineffectiveness on bunt attempts. BIS has a version of DRS for bunts, and during the 2012 season, Keuchel graded out two runs below average in this regard. Fielding percentage isn’t a great metric, but it does have some value in telling us who converts chances into outs, a skill Keuchel didn’t have as a rookie. His .931 fielding success rate was well below the league-average of .951. So, to sum everything up, Keuchel couldn’t make most plays, and he was exposed quite often on bunt attempts. As you’d expect, he didn’t save many runs early in his career, from a defensive vantage point.
Of course, it’s not just that Keuchel was bad defensively early in his career, statistically speaking. It’s not just that Keuchel is now good defensively later in his career, either. The question we should be asking ourselves is what changes have enabled this growth to happen. And I think I have a relatively easy explanation for most of it:
In the GIF images above, I’ve taken Keuchel to the point in his delivery where he is first readily able read-and-react to a batted ball. The first shows him in 2012 pitching to Jimmy Rollins, back when Rollins still donned a Phillies uniform (related: those were the good ol’ days, weren’t they?!). The second shows him last season, pitching to Jason Kipnis of the Indians. The important thing to note here is Keuchel’s positioning relative to the pitching rubber. As a rookie, Keuchel set up shop with his left foot pushing off the center of the rubber. In theory, this would seem to be a sound approach. Defensively? Well, not so much. As you’ll see, the tendency was for Keuchel to follow through with most of his body favoring the second-base side of the rubber at the read-and-react point of his delivery. This limited his ability to reach many batted balls to his right side, and Rollins, like many others, benefited from it with plenty of unsolicited grounders up the middle.
These days, this isn’t a problem. You’ll notice in the second image that Keuchel follows through not only in athletic position, but also with a foot on either side of the rubber. This is a product of adjustment. Rather than setting up shop at the center of the rubber, Keuchel made a pretty deliberate adjustment to push off with his left foot on the very end of the rubber. The product, clearly, is that he appears more readily able to react to a batted ball hit to either side of him than before. Granted, it’s very possible — and perhaps likely — that Keuchel made this adjustment for pitching purposes; releasing the ball above the center of the rubber, in theory, could have a better correlation to command than pushing off the center of the rubber. I’ll run the numbers at some point. Of course, the Astros seem to be ahead of the curve defensively than most teams. They shifted more than any team in baseball in 2015, and they also saved 30 runs as a unit last year, fourth-most of any club. Thus, it makes sense that they’d care how their ace follows through. It saves runs.
Of course, because there’s a lot of noise involved with run production and prevention, perhaps there’s another way to appreciate just how far Keuchel has come defensively.
Ah, yes. This does the trick. Using our TruMedia tool, I isolated Keuchel’s batting average against on all ground balls hit to dead center over the course of his career. I figured this would be a simplistic way of illustrating defensive growth for pitchers. How often, on average, was Keuchel able to turn a ground ball ball essentially hit back at him into an out? Turns out he’s come a long way in this regard. In fact, from 2012-2013, 31.1% of all grounders hit up the middle against him went for hits. That was slightly less (better) than league average, which tends to sit around 33% from season to season. Now check out the past two years. Essentially, Keuchel has doubled his frequency in turning up-the-middle grounders into outs. That’s impressive. Also impressive: Keuchel’s .164 batting average against on dead-center ground balls since 2014 bests all qualified starters.
But we can get even more here. One of the great features of our TruMedia tool is that it allows us to filter batted ball locations as specifically as we want. And in Keuchel’s case, I wanted to know how far he’s come with those pesky up-the-middle grounders hit only to his right side, similar to the GIF snapshots above. To do this, I isolated all ground balls hit either directly up the middle or as far as five feet to Keuchel’s right side. I realize five feet is arbitrary, but I thought it would be a quality number for his purpose. Anyways, the results. From 2012-2014, opponents batted .424 when they hit a ground ball within this designated area of the diamond against Keuchel. Different story since the start of 2014, as they’ve hit just .148 (next-closest lefty in this respect was Brad Hand‘s .240 BAA) against him. Since 2008, the league-average lefty has allowed a .389 average on such grounders. So, clearly, this adjustment has helped shore up his arm-side defensive range.
Perhaps what’s most impressive about Keuchel’s defensive growth is that, right now, a lot of pitchers are costing teams runs. Above, you’ll see what I’m getting at. This is a season-by-season breakdown of Defensive Runs Saved for each position on the diamond, dating back to 2003, the first year BIS began tracking the metric. I chose to set my innings limit at “0” for each position, rather than only using qualifiers or an arbitrary cutoff, since DRS accounts for all plays over a given season. I figured this would give me the most encompassing results. Again, what we’re seeing is pretty clear: Most pitchers can’t field. Not recently, at least. In the last four seasons, pitchers have combined for a league-wide DRS of -108 (!). You’ll notice how that stacks up to the rest of the positions on the diamond in that span. Just about all of them saved somewhere between -10 to 5 runs defensively, although last year, it appears that center fielders and left fielders stepped up a notch in this respect (+16).
Why are pitchers deviating so far from all other positions on the diamond by DRS? Perhaps it has something to do with fastball velocity; pitchers focusing on throwing hard, rather than getting themselves in good position to make a play on a batted ball. To test it out, I looked at 89 pitchers who tabbed at least 150 innings last year. The relationship between fastball velocity (x) and DRS (y) was, for all intents and purposes, non-existent (r = .0091). Maybe it has something to do with the rapid rise in and effects of defensive shifts; pitchers focusing in on the art of pitching these days, and letting their defensive adjustments behind them do more of the fielding work. Maybe pitchers are getting less athletic, with less range? Obviously, such a hypothesis would run counter to what most scouts would tell you these days; athleticism is valued more now than it ever has been in the amateur draft. Maybe some things are beyond explainable in baseball. I don’t know. This is a weird phenomena.
Still, I think the point is this: Dallas Keuchel is a heck of a defender. Granted, it’s not the first thing we think about when we close our eyes and picture the bearded man from Houston. It’s probably not the second, third, or fourth thing we think about him, either. But maybe it should be the first thing we think. Maybe it should, because what he’s doing is sort of unprecedented. Keuchel is saving far more runs than any pitcher in baseball defensively, and in an micro-era when pitchers are costing their teams more runs via poor fielding than at any point in the last decade or so. By definition, that’s a rare skill worth appreciating.
*All data courtesy TruMedia Networks, Inc. unless otherwise noted or hyperlinked*
Alec Dopp is a two-year contributor to Gammons Daily. He helps cover prospects for BaseballHQ.com and works with video scouting and operations at Baseball Info Solutions. Follow him on Twitter at @AlecDopp.