KC Royals’ Brad Keller talks life and his baseball journey

Brad Keller is one of the KC Royals’ most exciting young pitchers. His baseball journey to this point has been just as interesting.

Most know KC Royals starting pitcher Brad Keller for his ability to throw flames on the mound. He’s also a pretty interesting guy when he’s not pitching.

The 24-year-old righty recently appeared on The Charity Stripe podcast, hosted by Joshua Fisher, Alexander Tassopoulos, & Nicholas Tai Kreider. In an episode that lasted over an hour, he and the crew touched on a multitude of topics — ranging from the minor leagues and Keller’s major league debut, all the way to what he’s been working on to improve ahead of year three as a starter. Here are some quotes from the podcast:

Brad Keller on the minor leagues:

Keller shared a living area with five others during his early days in the minors. In addition to sleeping on an air mattress, making around $300 a month and biking to and from the ballpark on a daily basis, things at home were pretty barebones. “The most expensive thing we had in our house was a $30 table,” Keller said.

Keller believed in his dream of playing professional baseball for a living even more after his High-A season. He said, “I was like ‘Okay, we can make this work…’ I was starting to figure things out.” Keller also explained that the jump from A to AA was far more difficult than the jump from AA to the MLB.

On the culture of this KC Royals team:

• “This spring training was different. I think everyone was excited about this year.”
• “Everyone was just like, ‘We’re over losing. This isn’t fun.'”
• “I personally felt like we were going to surprise some people this year.”
• On having Salvador Perez back: “That was going to be our biggest addition.”

An inside look at his incident with White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson:

• “I feel like the two teams have always been competitive with each other.”
• “I was like ‘I’m not going to walk this guy,’ so I throw a sinker inside and he turns on it and hits a home run. How he acted afterward, to me and to our whole team, was over the top.”

Not only did Keller touch on the aforementioned subjects, but he talked about much more. He’s been working on improving his changeup and adopting a curveball so he can be a more complete pitcher in 2020. His first time going to an Opening Day game was when he pitched in one with the KC Royals.

You can listen to the podcast episode with Brad Keller in its entirety by clicking here.