ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Several offensive players made statement performances in Triple-A Lehigh Valley’s monstrous 13-1 Friday night victory over Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Tommy Pham went 3-for-4 at the plate with a sixth-inning grand slam to break the game open. Dylan Moore doubled three times. Carter Kieboom and Robert Moore each homered.
For right-handed starting pitcher Brian Keller, it was more about flushing out his last couple outings and focusing on pounding the zone.
After tossing three innings for the Phillies in his major-league debut on July 25, Keller made his next appearance on the mound for the IronPigs eight days later. He struggled through 4 1/3 innings against Buffalo, allowing six earned runs on five hits and walking three. The 32-year-old’s second start fared even worse; he was tagged for five runs in the first and was pulled after recording just one out.
It’s nothing compared to the adversity Keller’s faced in the past. His mental toughness guided him through two years away from baseball in 2024 and 2025 while he recovered from Tommy John surgery and a nerve transposition. The veteran knows he just needs to forget the bad starts and move on to the next one.
“Hopefully, you can learn from it, but for the most part, forget about it and get back to what you do best,” Keller said.
He thought he did just that after scattering four hits and three strikeouts across five innings, and allowing one earned run on a third-inning solo homer from Anthony Volpe. He threw 83 pitches — 54 for strikes — and recorded his first professional win since 2023 for the Hanshin Tigers in Japan. However, the part Keller was happiest about was not allowing any walks after issuing six free passes since returning to Lehigh Valley.
“It’s the free bases that kill you,” he said.
It was exactly the performance IronPigs manager Chris Adamson expected, who said pregame that he considered Keller’s previous two outings to be an outlier and it was back to business as usual for him.
“Last week he probably didn’t have the feel,” Adamson said. “It had been a while since he’d been on the mound and his volume was a little different.”
A 39th-round draft pick of the Yankees in 2016 out of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Keller spent five seasons in the organization until pitching in Triple-A for the Red Sox in 2022. Fast forward to 2026 after a stint in Japan and two surgeries, he found his next minor-league opportunity in the Phillies organization in May.
Keller briefly pitched at the team’s training complex in Florida before joining the IronPigs, where he posted a 2.23 ERA in eight starts and earned his promotion to the Phillies in July. He’s now struck out 44 batters and walked 17 through 46 Triple-A innings. Keller attributed a lot of his success to his new sinker, which he said was his best pitch Friday.
“Having (the sinker) as an option has been a game changer for me,” he said. “I don’t throw the changeup anymore like I used to for a good chunk of my early career, so learning that sinker and using that has been very helpful.”
Through it all, Keller continues to push. The quality start got him back on track on what’s been an impressive bounce-back from him. And the highlight of it all is that he can now call himself a big leaguer.
“That was a long time coming,” Keller said. “It’s just one of those things that you never know if it’s ever going to happen for sure. There’s a lot of luck involved with getting that call, you have to be doing well at the same time that the big-league club has a need for your position and a guy like me. Ten years and it finally happened.”
