Right-hander Joe Kelly should thrive now that the Boston Red Sox are committed to using him as a full-time reliever out of the bullpen.
Boston Red Sox fans have been saying it over and over for the better part of two and a half years now. Joe Kelly’s stuff is nasty, this is the year he puts it all together and figures it out.
What resulted was a 4.11 ERA in 2014, a 4.82 ERA in 2015, and a 5.18 ERA in 2016. Needless to say, Joe Kelly has not put it all together and figured it out.
Or maybe he has. Joe Kelly’s 2016 campaign is perfectly split between the two halves. In the first half, Kelly began operating in the first inning, making six starts. Notoriously having difficulty with facing the same hitters two or three times per start, Kelly would often collapse by the third or fourth inning. It wasn’t a stamina issue — the righty was still pumping fastballs in at 95+ mph even as the ball began to sail over the wall.
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Joe Kelly has a limited arsenal. He’s got his fastball (which he threw 65.8 percent of the time, per FanGraphs), slider (15 percent), curveball (13.4 percent) and changeup (5.8 percent). That doesn’t sound too atypical for a pitcher, but not all of those pitches are viable. The curve was rocked to a .364 clip last season and the changeup didn’t fare much better to the tune of a .308 opponent batting average.
When the first half dust settled, Kelly could look back on a 8.46 ERA and a .330/.437/.564 opponent slash line. To put it frankly, Kelly made the typical player look like Miguel Cabrera for an entire half. Sure, he could hang his hat on a 10.9 K/9, but that was almost entirely mitigated by his 1.42 K/BB ratio.
The 28-year old lost his rotation spot and came back in July out of the bullpen. The changeup and curve were all but abandoned. Kelly was determined to streamline his offerings into a predominantly fastball-slider mix. He threw 17.2 innings in the second half, allowing two runners to cross the plate.
1.02 ERA, 10.7 K/9, 4.20 K/BB, 1.01 WHIP. It almost makes you wonder why the Joe Kelly bullpen experiment wasn’t started years ago. Nonetheless, Kelly made a noticeable adjustment to his pitching style and the results were evident.
Yes, this is only 17.2 innings of work. And yes, Kelly has shown glimpses of dominance before reverting back to his old unreliable self. But the bullpen can transform a pitcher. He can throw even harder, his stuff will gain unpredictability as hitters see less of him, he can abandon less effective pitches in favor of better ones.
Most importantly, Farrell finally seems resigned to trying to force Kelly into a rotation role. For the first time, the righty is going into a season knowing that his role is in the pen. He’ll likely slot behind Tyler Thornburg as a seventh inning escape artist, much like fellow hard-throwing righty Matt Barnes.
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And now for the formal prediction, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record: Joe Kelly will put it all together and figure it out. To make a 2013 comparison: If Craig Kimbrel is the Koji Uehara and Tyler Thornburg is the Craig Breslow, then Kelly is the Junichi Tazawa. The days of role uncertainty are over, and the year of Joe Kelly has begun.