All it takes is a moment. Every life-changing event that seems to take weeks, months, or even years to lead to a sudden turn can be traced to one moment. A romantic breakup may have evolved over years, but one single moment can probably be identified as THE defining moment when things went south.

Tavares took a positive spin in 1975, in their only US Top 10 hit, “It Only Takes a Minute,” singing about the 60 seconds it takes to fall in love.

Betty White’s “Rose” character in TV’s Golden Girls may have crystallized the current career stage of Dallas Keuchel with her use of the presumably Norwegian gerkonanaken, “literally, the precise moment when dog-doo turns white.”

Not to compare a fine pitcher’s career with something so distasteful, but there has certainly been a turn… an ugly, unfortunate turn in the career of the Houston Astros’ 2015 American Cy Young Award winner and 2017 World Champion.

“Can I Be Next?”

He’s all but been a free agent since the last out was recorded in Baltimore, September 30. Even the two position player superstars have inked deals, including Manny Machado‘s $300 million to the San Diego Padres for 10 years, with Bryce Harper the latest, on February 28, to the Philadelphia Phillies for 13 years, $330 million.

Keuchel has to wonder where it all went wrong. Was it a long and winding road that has led him to an early, but usually inevitable journeyman tag in this, his age 31 year? Or, did it all boil down to one moment?

If so, was that moment when he effectively said, “Talk to the left hand” in response to Houston’s $17.9 million qualifying offer last fall?

Was that moment when he tweeted a gracious, but cryptic “Thank you, Houston,” soon after?

How about the snide “That doesn’t mean anything anymore, apparently” reply in mid-January to this fan tweet: “Yankees now need to sign @ kidkeuchy; he has a 3.66 career ERA, won a World Series, and won a Cy Young”?

Sure, he included a winking emoji, but was that a subconscious bitterness creeping in at the sudden awareness that he was a month away from Spring Training still unsigned?

Was it the moment his agent, Scott Boras, announced to the baseball world he’d be seeking a multi-year deal for his new client or was it the moment Astros’ GM Jeff Luhnow decided the current rage of 10-year-plus deals just isn’t for him?

Keep It Short

Trying to capture that precise moment was ESPN’s Buster Olney recently. He even cites the Phillies’ GM Mike Klentak as only being interested in a “very” short-term deal for Keuchel, while Houston hasn’t been involved in DK talks in “recent weeks.”

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that the Twins aren’t likely to sign Keuchel unless he’s suddenly willing to accept a one-year deal three weeks into Spring Training.

Two starters for the Atlanta Braves suddenly suffering spring injuries aren’t enough motivation to warrant a Keuchel probe, according to MLB.com’s Mark Bowman.

No one following baseball predicted Machado and Harper would be left unsigned through the spring, even though the late signing of them both has raised eyebrows and likely a couple of salaries.

But, imagine a scenario where Keuchel remains unsigned all the way up to Opening Day. How about til the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, where instead of a trade, some needy team ponies up the long-awaited dough to ink Houston’s most famous beard not named James Harden?

Olney suggests Keuchel, in particular, is being harmed to some extent by the fact that he doesn’t fit the paradigm of hard throwers so coveted in today’s game. Olney adds that Keuchel’s average fastball of 89.3 mph ranked 55th of 57 starters who qualified for the ERA title in 2018.

The man who posed for ESPN’s Body Issue last year may suddenly be struck by the harsh reality that he’s no longer sexy.

Buy the Numbers

MLB Trade Rumors’ Steve Adams pushes back on Olney’s assertion: “Keuchel’s average fastball last season was actually improved over a pair of seasons in which he was slowed by back and neck injuries in 2016-17. In fact, in Keuchel’s Cy Young-winning 2015 season, he averaged just 89.6 mph on his heater, so it’d be puzzling to see significant level of concern over that fastball velocity.”

Adams, though, offers some stats that play in favor of the GMs and their apparent reluctance to pull the trigger on a deal: “The lefty’s strikeout percentage dipped from 21.4 percent in 2017 to 17.5 percent in 2018 (7.7 K/9 vs. 6.7), and his swinging-strike rate fell from 10.9 percent to 8.3 percent.

“His ground-ball rate of 53.7 percent, while well north of the league average, also represented a substantial step back from 2017’s 66.8 percent mark and from his overall career mark of 58.8 percent. All of that surely sets off some alarms for interested teams, but Keuchel was nevertheless a quality starter in 2018, as has been the case for several years.”

Smart Money

Like the countrywide guessing game that accompanied the time and place of the descent of NASA’s Skylab in 1979, office pools might be forming to guess the day and place of Keuchel’s signing.

And, it will happen. But, Boras and Keuchel, both, will have to swallow their respective prides and will only see “stupid Harper money” in their dreams.