What's eating Dallas Keuchel?

It's the offseason right after Astros fell six outs of the American league championship series. You are walking around downtown, a Delorean appears out of nowhere Marty McFly hops and yells "In early May of next year the Astros will be healthy and be the worst team in baseball and Dallas Keuchel will have an ERA above 5." We'd all laugh and say sure McFly...

But oh my god he was right!

This season something is wrong with Astros, and something just might be wrong with their Cy Young pitcher Dallas Keuchel.

In 2015, he won 20 games with a 2.48 ERA. This season 2 wins with a 5.11 ERA.

Is it the Astros as a whole struggling and it's affecting everyone? Is it Keuchel declining slightly? Or after two seasons of dominating baseball, have batters started figuring him out?

Yes, maybe and per Keuchel yes.

"I guess the book on me is 40 something percent weren't strikes last year and I got a lot of chases out of the zone," Keuchel said "lot of that entails me filling up the zone early and then expanding on my own, instead of expanding early and then having to come to the plate late."

2014, it was all about the groundouts as batters would do everything they could do to lift the ball but ultimately it resulted in a groundball out. 2015 was the year of the strikeout for Keuchel. He still commanded plenty of respect with the groundball but now his movement went from good to great with batters hopeless flailing as a pitch dipped out of the strike zone and resulted in a punchout. The lefty finished ninth in baseball in strikeouts with 216 during his Cy Young season (70 strikeout improvement from 2014 to 2015).

This season Keuchel looks pretty much the same pitcher that he has been in years past but his speed across the board has slipped just a tiny bit.

Is it enough to be that big of a difference? Probably not. If you combine the loss in speed, with some sloppy play, trying to be a little bit to fine and batters being a little more patient with Keuchel, you now begin to understand why he has not looked the same as in years past.

"I got to rely on attacking the zone early and establishing the strike zone and making sure guys know I'm on the plate and they can't rely on the umpire to call balls," Keuchel said.

After two years of domination, you believe in Keuchel, you understand this is just a rough stretch. The game of baseball is all about adjustments the first few starts have left a lot to be desired, but he understands what he needs to do and how he needs to get there.