Mariners sign reliever Keynan Middleton, designate outfielder Phillip Ervin for assignment
Keynan Middleton is excited for the homecoming.
The newest Mariners reliever, who signed with the club Wednesday, will now be pitching just a few hours north of his native Portland.
“Since I heard the Mariners were interested, it was a no-brainer for me almost,” Middleton said on a video call with reporters. “My family is so close, my daughters live down in Portland, so this is everything I want.
“This is an organization that is trending in the right direction, so I’m really happy to be a part of it.”
After spending the first four seasons of his big league career with the Angels, the 27-year-old becomes the latest addition to a rebuilding Seattle bullpen.
He said the relationships and strong team bonds he’s heard about the past several days in talks with the coaching staff are what he’s most excited about.
“It’s a young staff,” he said. “It’s all for the players. I’ve been other places. I’ve been places where it’s not the same. (The Mariners) want to know about you, and they’re not trying to change you, they’re trying to get the best out of you, so I like that a lot.”
The Mariners added Middleton less than a day after they traded for Rangers closer Rafael Montero.
Seattle designated outfielder Phillip Ervin for assignment to make room for its newest reliever, keeping the 40-man roster full at 40 players.
Middleton made 13 relief appearances for the Angels during the shortened 2020 season, and also spent a month at the club’s alternate training site.
He finished 0-1 with a 5.40 ERA — his highest single-season ERA since his debut in 2017. He had 11 strikeouts to six walks across 12 innings.
“I honestly just had a rough season,” Middleton said. “It was my first one, my first rough one that I had, so I’m looking to move past it. I know I’m going to learn from my mistakes. I’m going to go out and be better.”
Middleton doesn’t attribute his performance to the oddity of the 2020 season, which was shortened and altered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m not going to make any excuses about that,” he said. “It was definitely weird for everybody.”
Middleton had been limited since the 2018 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery that May.
He returned in August of the following year, and posted a career-best 1.17 ERA in 11 appearances, but without his usual velocity, he said.
In 2020, Middleton’s fastball averaged 97.1 mph — the highest of his four-season major league career — and he said he tried to go to it too often.
“For me honestly, when I came back and I finished the season in 2019, I felt really good, and I felt really crisp, but the velo wasn’t there,” he said. “And last year, the velo was there and at times I was just trying to overthrow or I was trying to throw fastballs by guys because I felt so good.
“Like I said, I learned from my mistakes from last year, and I’m going to move forward. I feel like command was an issue because at times I was getting in love with my (fastball). Last year I threw the hardest I’ve ever thrown in my career, so I was just trying to get used to that, and I was trying to use my fastball too much.
“But, I think if mix my pitches this year it’s going to be a whole different story.”
Because Seattle’s bullpen is so young, Middleton could be one of the relievers who vies for a spot at the back end of the staff. He collected nine saves between 2017-18 with the Angels before his surgery.
“I’m a really competitive person so the harder the situation or the tougher the situation, I like being in that, and I think that’s when I shine the best, and I’m going to prove that here hopefully,” he said.
With the Mariners, Middleton will also reunite with general manager Jerry Dipoto, who drafted him out of Eugene’s Lane Community College in the third round in 2013.
Middleton was primarily a basketball player then, but said Dipoto saw something in him that he didn’t, and that eventually led to a big league career.
“I just trusted the process,” Middleton said. “They drafted me out of Lane Community College. I was a freshman. I was playing basketball. Basketball was honestly my No. 1 sport.
“I came out late for the (baseball) season, so I already was a late jump to the season. And when they ended up drafting me it was honestly like a shock to me because I was not ready to play pro ball — I just really wasn’t.
“So, I just had to take my lumps honestly. I just had to learn how to pitch and learn how to play the game, and I never was discouraged. When Jerry was in our organization, they never let me be discouraged. It just ended up working out.”
Middleton debuted for the Angels in 2017, finishing 6-1 with a 3.86 ERA in a career-high 64 appearances, and struck out 63 while walking 18 in 58 1/3 innings.
He was 6-2 with a 3.48 ERA and 96 strikeouts to 40 walks across 104 games in parts of four seasons with Los Angeles.
Middleton, who also attended Milwaukie High School in Oregon and played football, basketball and baseball there, said he was mostly interested in basketball growing up, but the Mariners were the one team he had ties to.
“I didn’t watch too much baseball, but my family is a baseball family,” he said. “And all they do is watch Mariners games and when we were at our family reunions listen to Mariners games.
“They’re so hyped. My phone’s lighting up right now. My whole family is so excited. There’s a group chat. I’m just so excited. That was the only team I really even saw on TV growing up, so it’s huge to me.”
Middleton will spend the rest of the offseason in Portland with his daughters, he said, before heading to Arizona for spring training.
Ervin, 28, appeared in 18 games for the Mariners in 2020 after he was claimed off waivers from the Reds on Aug. 28. He finished hitting .205/.340/.282 with three doubles and four RBI with the Mariners.
This story was originally published December 16, 2020 at 10:32 AM.
