Veteran left-hander Dallas Keuchel cleared waivers and elected free agency after being designated for assignment by the Brewers, Curt Hogg of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. He’s now free to sign with any club.
Keuchel, 36, signed a minor league deal with the Mariners over the winter but was acquired by Milwaukee for cash last month. He’d gotten out to a nice start with the Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma (71 innings, 3.93 ERA, 15.6 percent strikeout rate, 7.6 percent walk rate, 59.5 percent grounder rate), and a Brewers club in dire need of rotation innings turned to the former Cy Young winner to help patch their injury-ravaged staff.
Keuchel had two tough starts and two solid ones for the Brew Crew, pitching a total of 16 2/3 innings with an 11-to-8 K/BB ratio and 52.5 percent ground-ball rate before being designated.
Keuchel had a similar but lengthier stint as a depth starter with the Twins down the stretch in 2023, appearing in 10 games (six of them starts) and posting a 5.97 ERA in 37 2/3 frames. As with Milwaukee, he had his share of solid appearances in the Twin Cities but was also hit quite hard on a few occasions.
It’s been years since Keuchel, the 2015 American League Cy Young winner, was a solid member of a big league rotation. He made 11 starts and tossed 63 1/3 innings of sparkling 1.99 ERA ball with the White Sox in the shortened 2020 season, but the final two seasons of his three-year, $55.5M deal in Chicago was a disaster. Dating back to 2021, Keuchel has pitched to a grisly 6.24 ERA in 277 innings — a far cry from the 1,126 innings of 3.25 ERA ball he compiled in his 2014-2020 peak.
Rough as Keuchel’s recent results have been, the veteran southpaw has pitched quite well in Triple-A over the past few seasons. This year’s 88.1 mph average velocity on his sinker sits well below the league average but is also his best mark since a strong 2019 season with the Braves when he averaged 88.3 mph.
Keuchel worked with Driveline Baseball during the early part of the 2023 season to restore some of his dwindling velocity and parlayed that into his deal with the Twins.
He’s now added a bit more life to the sinker and still looked sharp in two of his four Milwaukee appearances. A club in need of some rotation depth figures to scoop him up on a minor league pact in the coming weeks.
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