This is going to sound odd, but knowing about pitch isn't absolutely necessary - well, not in the sense of being able to identify the pitch of a note aurally. That takes some doing if you don't have perfect pitch, and that's something you're born with.

But I often say when I'm teaching kids how to play a melody on a keyboard that they should pay attention to the PATTERNS of notes - because a keyboard is a very 'visual' instrument. I'm not a pianist (although I can play a bit), but I suppose you can equate it with being able to touch-type in that yes, you DO get to know where to put your fingers without looking, just over a much larger area, given the relative sizes of the keyboards involved.
I'm a clarinettist principally, and while I learned to play once I could already read music, so it was a case of my learning which fingers I needed to use to play which notes, when we teach kids to play an instrument today, we do it a bit differently. The idea is to get them to associate certain finger patterns with the positions of notes on the stave, so that while you're not sitting them down and going through FACE or EGDBF, they are nonetheless learning where they are by a different form of association.

Wow - that was technical!

I've met some amazing musicians who can't read music and who play wonderfully 'by ear'. Although I'm a bit of a purist by heart, so I'd say that it's a good idea to be able to read, if you get a good result by other means, and you're happy and enjoy it, I'd say go for it.