Brady Grove examines the early season struggles of AL SP Dallas Keuchel and attempts to reassure fantasy baseball owners that Keuchel should be safe to own for the remainder of the year.

Last season Dallas Keuchel had a monumental year, to say the least. His 20 wins, 2.48 ERA, 2.91 FIP, and league leading 1.017 WHIP earned him the AL Cy Young award and a Gold Glove. So coming in to this season, many Fantasy Baseball Managers were thrilled to use an early round pick to reap the rewards of Keuchel's stardom. What those Managers probably didn't expect was for Dallas to start the 2016 season with a 4.70 ERA, 1.523 WHIP, while allowing an uncharacteristic 3.9 BB/9 and a league leading 48 hits. So with a preseason ADP of 43rd overall and a masterful overall performance last season, we sit here on May 9th wondering: What is wrong with Dallas Keuchel?

An initial optimistic statistic for Keuchel would be that based off of his improved HR/9 of 0.6, which is impressive when considering his hitter-friendly home turf in Houston, his FIP of 3.53 indicates his ERA may be a little high when compared to his isolated performance. It is also important to note that Keuchel's opponents currently have a BABIP of .346 (5th highest in MLB), which is why Keuchel is allowing so many hits, even though he is actually putting the ball in play less at 68% and is allowing just a 23% line drive rate. Keuchel has stayed true to his usual formula for success by putting a league leading 47% of his pitches outside of the strike zone and producing 76 ground balls (3rd in MLB) and a GB/FB ratio of 1.31 (11th in MLB). Keuchel's swing and miss strikes percentage has even risen to 19.1%, which makes it even more unlucky that his walks have increased while his strikeouts have dropped.

Given the figures we have just discussed and interpreted, we can statistically account for many of the detrimental changes in Dallas Keuchel's pitching. He has had better performances at home with a 3.26 ERA and 1.397 WHIP than he has on the road this season where opponents have a .370 OBP and a very high .375 BABIP against him. Even with his April struggles Keuchel has still had three solid outings in which he has only given up four ER in 22 IP. Even in his last outing of seven IP and two ER, both runs came off of two solo HR which account for two of Keuchel's three homers allowed this year.

Every single negative aspect of Keuchel's early season struggles can be statistically and very optimistically accounted for. He is allowing less HR, he is putting the ball in play less and limiting line drives, he is still producing a high number of ground balls, and his opponent's BABIP signifies that he has been extremely unlucky in the formation of his very high WHIP. While it is possible that batters have stopped swinging at the numerous amount of pitches that Keuchel puts outside of the strike zone, he is still producing plenty of strikes on swing and miss attempts, and he has continued to follow the picture perfect formula that he used to win the Cy Young last season. The verdict shouldn't be a shock: There is no reason to panic with Dallas Keuchel, especially with the limited sample size of just seven starts. There are other pitchers that warrant far more panic (cough cough, Shelby Miller owners).

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