WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Dallas Keuchel never felt right last year. The 2015 American League Cy Young Award winner knew something was wrong from the time the Astros opened camp in 2016, but he kept mum: Like most pitchers with the requisite drive to reach Major League heights, Keuchel wanted the ball and believed in his ability to succeed despite injury.

He didn’t. One season after throwing a career high 246 innings across the regular season and postseason, the left-hander saw his ERA spike over two runs to an ugly 4.55 mark as his average fastball velocity dropped a tick and he struggled to find the sharpness on his sinker that helped him lead the AL in groundball rate in 2014 and 2015. He yielded both hits and homers at rates well higher than the standards he established for himself, and struck out opponents less often than he did in his award-winning 2015. Keuchel strung together a series of good starts starting in mid-June, but for most of the year, something appeared amiss.

Yet Keuchel kept pitching until late August, when the shoulder soreness that plagued him all season begat back pain from his body’s efforts to compensate. When he finally spoke up to team doctors, he landed on the shelf for the campaign’s final month, forced to watch from the sidelines as the Houston club fought unsuccessfully to stay in the wild card hunt.

“From the get-go, coming into spring training, it wasn’t right,” Keuchel said Wednesday before the first official practice for Astros pitchers and catchers. “But I was telling myself I could push through it, and get through it, but that wasn’t the case. I actually hurt the team more than helped them out, so I learned that it’s OK to tell people if you’re not feeling right.

“It was like I was using a rubber band and shooting it to the sky to get (the ball) 60 feet. I knew something was wrong from the get-go, and nothing helped. So at that point it was, OK, we’ve got to say something to the doctor.”

(Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports)

Keuchel hated being on the bench while his team played out the final month, and said he initially regretted not speaking up sooner about his shoulder issues. Now, in retrospect, he recognizes his 2016 campaign as a valuable lesson.

“I want to be out there as much as possible,” he said. “I don’t want to sit back and ask myself if I could’ve done more. I knew I did everything that I possibly could to take care of myself, even while injured. It’s one of those things where, if you could take it back you would, but I definitely don’t have any regrets. I’ll just learn from past experiences now.”

“There’s a ton of physical battles these guys go through all the time, but we always want our athletes to be honest with us,” manager A.J. Hinch said Wednesday. “There’s a difference between playing hurt or playing injured, or sore. The onus is on the player all the time to balance that. You’re not going to feel 100%. From today until hopefully November, you’re not going to feel 100%. We always want to err on the side of knowing earlier, rather than later.

“We were aware that things weren’t perfect for him. I think when you reflect back, you can see a little bit of the uphill climb for him, then there was a good section of his season, then another uphill climb. The consistency is what Dallas is all about, so something had to be wrong for him to not be the usual consistent way.”

The Astros added a trio of veterans to their lineup this offseason in free-agent signees Carlos Beltran and Josh Reddick and trade acquisition Brian McCann. But despite ongoing talk that they could add another starting pitcher, they’re currently primed to enter 2017 with sky-high expectations and the 29-year-old Keuchel as their de facto No. 1 starter. That would hardly seem damning if it weren’t for Keuchel’s rough 2016 — “I sucked,” he put it bluntly — but uncertainty will surround the front of the club’s rotation until Keuchel proves himself healthy.

“Our ace is Dallas,” said rotation-mate Lance McCullers, another pitcher with frontline potential working to rebound from an injury-riddled 2016. “Where he goes, we go. That’s the guy we’re going to follow.”

(Scott Halleran/Getty Images)

The World Baseball Classic means players have a bit more time than usual this year to ready themselves for opening day, and though Keuchel arrived to the Astros’ new facility before the scheduled report date, he’s still in the early stage of preparations and not yet throwing breaking pitches.

But Keuchel spent the offseason focused on taking better care of his body, and opened camp in 2017 feeling more like the guy who shut down the Yankees to help Houston win the 2015 AL wild card game. Five bullpen sessions deep into his spring regimen, he sounded confident in his ability to bounce back.

“I feel like a brand new guy,” he said. “It felt a little weird, playing catch at first and then getting off the mound the first time — it felt like I hadn’t been out there for a while. But it all came together rather quickly, and that was good to see. It just felt so good to get off the elevated ground and throw to a catcher, and hear a little bit of a pop from the mitt.

“Everything points to normal, so that’s a good feeling.”

With core position players like Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and George Springer in the fold, the Astros’ roster looks deep enough to contend even if Keuchel endures another rough season. But if “normal,” for Keuchel, refers to the excellent level at which the lefty pitched in 2014 and 2015, the club becomes a clear favorite to win its division outright for the first time since 2001. Sports Illustrated, you may recall, declared the Astros the “2017 World Series champs” back in 2014. Their ace’s health will go a long way toward determining if they get there.