Keutchel did indeed earn it. He doesn't pack heat like the other guys do. He just control the strike zone and where hitters are going to ground the out.
There is something cool about watching a guy develop all the way from draft day. He was originally a pitchability guy, with a fastball likely too slow to play in the show. First time he really popped up on the radar was at Lancaster. He had success there, when nobody is supposed to have success there. It was cool, but his limited stuff meant that he was still "at best" a back of the rotation guy. Then he had some struggles in the high minors, and struggled in the show at first which seemed to back up the limited stuff fears. He showed a lot of positive metrics in 2013, but the ERA didn't reflect it. Then he blew up last year. This year, most of us figured he would regress a little, but still be really good. Not only did he not regress, he got even better. Dude is a stud, and a professional pitcher. All of the prospects we've amassed in recent years, he was never mentioned as part of the future.
Ran into him at the Galleria and he was nice enough to snap a quick picture with me. Very swell dude and well deserved award!
Buster "scrub" Olney ranked his top 10 pitchers for 2016...ranked Kuechel 7th. Terrible list, in my opinion: 1. Kershaw 2. Arrieta 3. Greinke 4. Bumgardner 5. DeGrom 6. Price 7. Kuechel 8. Scherzer 9. Cole 10. Harvey Article here: http://espn.go.com/blog/buster-olney/insider/post?id=11693
Looks reasonable to me. Perhaps Arrieta is a bit high, but moving him down and Baumgartner/Greinke up won't change Keuchel's rating.
I think Bumgardner is far too high. I'd also think leaving Gray off the list is a mistake. I think he's top 10 over Harvey, especially with concerns about Harvey's IP.
You think it's terrible, but moving Bumgarner down a few spots and replacing Harvey with Gray would make you happy? That doesn't seem terrible. Essentially you agree on 9 of the 10 and you would replace #10 with Olney's "toughest guy to leave off" (essentially Olney's #11).
my list would be: kershaw, greinke, price, arrieta, kuechel, scherzer, degrom, grey, cole, bumgarder/sale/archer. you're right, its not radically different, but i do think listing bumgardner at 4 is way too high. who knows, maybe not pitching in the postseason (after his 2014 innings) will give him a big jump, but mad-bum wasn't a top 5 pitcher this year, so I don't see why would he be a top 5 pitcher next year.
Really the list should be 1. Kershaw 2. 3. 4. 5. Everyone Else Kershaw is really on another level with his domination and consistency.
It doesn't matter where Keuchel as ranked as long as we know he is an ace. Would like to lock him up long term this offseason before he gets closer to arb 2, arb 3, and eventually free agency.
Didn't know where else to put this: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Dallas Keuchel's pitch % breakdown last year is pretty insane. Only 5.2% of his pitches were up in the SZ. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Control?src=hash">#Control</a> <a href="https://t.co/6HZBkYZwRr">pic.twitter.com/6HZBkYZwRr</a></p>— Daren Willman (@darenw) <a href="https://twitter.com/darenw/status/716344251349643265">April 2, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
