Red Sox: Joe Kelly developed a new pitch in the postseason

Boston Red Sox reliever Joe Kelly reveals that he came up with a new pitch moments before the playoffs began that helped him dominate out of the bullpen.

They say that baseball is a game of adjustments. Joe Kelly made one on the fly as the Boston Red Sox prepared for their ALDS match up with the Cleveland Indians – an adjustment that paid immediate dividends.

Kelly was one of the few bright spots in a series that saw Boston swept in the opening round of the postseason. The right-hander thrived once the Red Sox finally made the long overdue decision to convert him into a reliever and when the postseason rolled around Kelly raised his game to another level, retiring all 11 batters that he faced over three appearances.

Once considered a liability in the rotation, Kelly transformed into arguably the team’s most valuable reliever by the end of the postseason. What changed? Kelly credits his drastic turnaround in large part to the development of a new pitch that added a devastating new weapon to his arsenal.

Appearing on the Bradfo Sho podcast with WEEI’s Rob Bradford, Kelly explained his last-minute decision to use a modified version of his slider in the postseason.

"“In the playoffs, it was all sliders. I kind of tweaked the sliders with (assistant pitching coach) Brian Bannister I think the first day in Cleveland,” recalled Kelly. “We held the same grip, but did something with my wrist, the way I cocked it a little bit different and I played catch with them warming up before batting practice for about 10 minutes. I liked how it spun, and he liked how it spun and how it went straight down and disappeared, kind of like a Chris Archer-type slider.”"

A spur of the moment decision to rely on a pitch that he had only practiced with for about 10 minutes sounds incredibly risky, but it worked. Kelly claims to have thrown his revamped slider on 10 of the 13 pitches he tossed in one of his playoff appearances, marveling at the number of swings and misses he could generate with it.

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As long as it’s working, why not stick with it? Kelly knew that the scouting report on him would encourage opposing hitters to look for fastballs up in the zone and curveballs in the dirt, but this new pitch was something they wouldn’t expect. Throwing hitters off balance with a pitch they never had the opportunity to study from him gave him an advantage that he used to deliver dominant performances on the postseason stage.

The question now is whether or not Kelly can carry that success over to the upcoming season. Now that teams have caught a glimpse of him throwing his new slider he won’t have that element of surprise.

Kelly will have had the entire offseason to refine this new pitch, so it will be interesting to see how effective he is with it this spring. He won’t be able to use it nearly as often as he did in the series against Cleveland, but having the pitch in his back pocket will help keep hitters guessing.

Based on what we saw in the second half of the season into the playoffs, Kelly has the chance to flourish in his new bullpen role. He has the ability to blow away hitters with a fastball that he can dial up to the upper-90’s as a reliever and can now compliment that with a slider that misses bats.

Next: Positive reports on E-Rod

Bostons’ retooled bullpen has the potential to be among the best in the league, with this new and improved Kelly serving as an essential component.