Joe Kelly: Perennially an Adjustment Away
Joe Kelly always seems just a tweak away from greatness. He owns one of the biggest fastballs in the game, and has decent secondary pitches that don’t deserve scorn either. His command isn’t great, but he’s no Henry Rodriguez either. Throw a little bit more of one pitch, or a little bit less of another, the thinking has gone, and we’ll finally see greatness from the guy to match his athleticism and velocity.
You might have to admit that the latest tweak, suggested publicly by his manager, makes you wonder if there’s a fatal flaw that will forever keep the 26-year-old Red Sox starter from realizing his potential. It’s already the third such tweak that either the player or the team has discussed since they acquired him late last year.
One of the first prescriptions came from Curt Schilling. On air, he’s talked about Kelly using the four-seamer more often, especially high. That would change the eye level and up the velocity on the pitch, two things that should help him strike batters out more. Makes sense, and it seems that, at least on some level, Kelly has listened.
Before the trade, his pitching mix from Brooks Baseball, with velocity, average fastball height as it crosses the plate, and whiff rates.
| Pitch Type | Freq | Velo (mph) | swSTR% | Vertical Loc |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fourseam | 10.3% | 95.8 | 6.4% | -0.2 |
| Sinker | 57.2% | 95.4 | 5.1% | -0.3 |
And then after the trade.
| Pitch Type | Freq | Velo (mph) | swSTR% | Vertical Loc |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fourseam | 15.5% | 96.5 | 8.5% | -0.1 |
| Sinker | 52.0% | 96.0 | 3.6% | -0.3 |
More four-seamers. Slightly higher in the zone. Getting more whiffs. It hasn’t been enough to change Kelly’s fortunes, and recently he swore off the approach. Check out the lede from the game story on a recent start:
SEATTLE, Wash. — Here’s what a successful day at the office looks like for Red Sox right-handed starter Joe Kelly: 14 ground ball outs, three fly ball outs and two strikeouts.
The key to inducing so many ground ball outs?
“I threw one four-seam fastball,” he said. “I just stayed with my two-seam all the time because I feel like I had command on both sides (of the plate). The other day I was throwing more four-seams and and just yanking them off the plate.”
Going into this season, Kelly was ecstatic about his slider. According to the pitcher, it was the first time he’d thrown the slider in years. Rob Bradford remembers it as the slider that led to so much success at UC Irvine. And after his first outing, it was easy to fall into the same excitement that led Kelly to declare he was going to win the Cy Young this year.
For sure, the slider has changed.
| Freq | Velo | swSTR | Horiz Move | Vert Move | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slider Before | 9.6% | 83.8 | 15.5% | 4.8 | -1.9 |
| Slider ’15 | 14.1% | 86.3 | 22.5% | 3.3 | -1.9 |
It’s harder and straighter now, and it’s getting more whiffs. Who knows what Kelly called his last slider, but this new slider is looking good. He should throw it more! It’s a top-ten slider among starters! He is, but not by a ton. And again, his swinging strikes are up a bit, but not a ton. He’s still tied for the fastest fastball in the big leagues, with two other guys that don’t get the whiffs you’d expect.
Now the most recent edict.
From a post called “Red Sox would like Joe Kelly to diversify his mix“, Tim Britton relays Kelly’s newest prescription for success, handed down by the manager.
MINNEAPOLIS — A day after he was shelled for seven runs in just 1 2/3 innings, Joe Kelly sat down and reviewed the ugly tape with manager John Farrell and pitching coach Carl Willis.
The verdict? The same as Farrell’s been saying really since Kelly was acquired from St. Louis last season: The right-hander should be throwing his curveball more.
“I still contend and strongly believe that his curveball is a major weapon that’s got to be used in his pitch mix,” Farrell said. “You look back at the Texas game: He made a very tangible adjustment after three innings of work when he went to his curveball more than his slider and slowed them down and had some quick and efficient innings. It’s part of the education process of who Joe is as a pitcher and what makes him most effective.”
This might be the weirdest road map of them all. By whiffs, his curve is his worst non-fastball when compared to the league average by whiffs.
It is his best ground-ball pitch. But Joe Kelly’s 52% career ground-ball rate has been his best statistical feature other than fastball velocity. Is this really the final step?
As Farrell points out, the curve is his slowest pitch, and by using it more, he can stretch the possible velocities hitters will see from 80 mph to 96. That might benefit his sinker and fastballs more than another tick of velocity would. And it could work better than the new slider, or the high four-seamers.
Mostly, throwing the curve more might work because there’s a hint of a possibility that Kelly can get the curve over inside the strike zone, which hasn’t been true of his other pitches over time. Look at the zone percentages of his different pitches, indexed to the league averages of each pitch, and you’ll see he can’t command his secondary stuff.
| Pitch | Index Zone% | |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | FA | 124 |
| 2015 | FT | 106 |
| 2015 | CU | 95 |
| 2015 | SL | 70 |
| 2015 | CH | 30 |
| Total | FA | 122 |
| Total | FC | 104 |
| Total | FT | 101 |
| Total | CU | 90 |
| Total | CH | 83 |
| Total | SL | 74 |
If your changeup has good shape and velocity, but you only hit the zone with it with one out of every eight thrown… then your changeup isn’t much use. They’ll stop swinging at it.
So there you have it: stealing strikes with the curve ball is what will help Joe Kelly make good on his promise. Either that, or we’ll all have to go back to the drawing board.
Thanks to Jonah Pemstein for finding league average zone% by pitch types.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
He’s also on his third pitching coach in the last 11 months. And didn’t start at all in college. That arm is easy to dream big on.
And he’s had to adjust to working with four different catchers already this year, none of whom are named Molina.
Still, I gotta wonder if Eno’s headline will still be valid five years from now. Wouldn’t be the first guy with super talent not to put it all together.
But he also sucked while working with Molina (and, more importantly, Dave Duncan), haha.
Duncan left St Louis after the 2011 season when Kelly had just finished his first season in AA. I realy doubt they worked together a whole lot.
That’s what he seems like to me. Franklin Morales type, but with a slightly higher floor.
This talk about “potential greatness” was never heard of before he was traded to the red sox. He was just an SP/RP swingman who threw hard before the trade.
He’s a 27yr old without consistent command or secondary pitches who’s never had any notable success as an SP, in the majors or minors. Dime a dozen type.
The fact that Boston management actually had the gall to call him a proven MLB SP with track record prior to the season was just a silly baldfaced lie. I’m just wondering if they were lying to themselves, too.
citation?
For the Red Sox front office saying that?
Because the rest of the comment was pretty much on point.
yes
countless spring training quotes claiming the Sox “may not have an ace, but have 5 guys with proven track records”.
Look at how much they’re paying him.
$603,000
Ha. I should have looked it up, but my comment works both ways. 🙂
I feel like he’s the answer to the question “What happens when you take a Nathan Eovaldi, add two years of age and take away his control.”
Let’s distinguish between command and control. Command is the ability to throw strikes; control is the ability to locate pitches.
His career walk rate is 8.8%, which isn’t that bad. The reason his velocity/stuff doesn’t result in strikeouts (career 16.2%) is because he can’t locate the ball at all. He throws a ton of meatballs, and misses his target a lot.
If you watch his latest shellacking against the Twins you’ll notice that he struggled to hit the catchers glove with all of his pitches.
Is using his curve going to make him a better pitcher? Maybe, it can’t hurt but he’s going to live and die by his control. It needs to be better.
I think you have it backwards.
Control = strikes
Command = throwing the ball where you want.
A pitcher can have good control in the form of always being around the plate, not hitting batters, etc.
But command is a separate issue. Numerous times throughout the game you want to throw a ball off the plate, and definitely do not want to “throw a strike” in the form of “missing over the plate”. That’s command.
The terms are easily substituted for one another in everyday language that it’s easy to mix them up or swap them out.
Command can also refer to adjusting the velocity of pitches and the amount of break you want depending on count.
Yeah, circleChange11, I typed it backwards. Brain fart.
The point I was trying to make is that Kelly’s point is not *control*, it’s *command* within the zone.
Pretty embarrassing that I was trying to correct Cool Lester Smooth on his reference to “control” instead of “command”, and then got them backwards myself.
Anyway, the point: Joe Kelly can throw strikes. Joe Kelly cannot hit the corners of the zone on purpose.
I meant control, actually. Eovaldi’s command sucks, too, but he has noticeably better control than Kelly.
I like how you put potential greatness in quotes to make it seem like someone ever actually said that. You go all the down from greatness to saying “proven track records,” without providing a link for any of this. It’s really easy to win an argument when you make up the other side’s contentions.
And no one EVER saw hype for Joe Kelly before…well, unless they spent 30 seconds doing cursory Google searches:
http://redbirdrants.com/2014/01/29/joe-kelly-star/
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2012/06/joe_kelly_to_make_his_major_league_debut_cardinals_pitcher.php
In fact, if you search for Joe Kelly and track record, you get a Sox site before the season claiming he DOESN’T have one and should be the first SP sent to the pen: http://www.overthemonster.com/2015/1/9/7519761/joe-kelly-red-sox-2015-rotation-bullpen
But really, try again to prove this belabored point like a petulant child. Really, we feel so sorry for you that this free site isn’t offering you the exact content you want.
heh. i like how at the end of all those tears you call me a petulant child.
here’s a quote from that cards fanblog you linked to: “Kelly is really kind of a forgotten man, with virtually no hype whatsoever”.
exactly what i said.
and you really need me to actually go and get one of the countless preseason quotes about the sox having “5 solid sp with track record”? really?
oh and about “potential greatness”, did you even read the article? its in the first sentence.
because your insults hurt my feelings, i went out and looked it up. here you go:
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/02/23/john-farrell-on-sports-final-no-concerns-about-red-sox-lack-of-ace/
“The fact is we have five guys in the rotation with legit major league track records,” Farrell told WBZ-TV’s Dan Roche on Sunday night’s edition of Sports Final.”
You guys shouldn’t be directing your anger at me – you should be directing it at your management that’s been blowing smoke up your butts, and at the media who has only helped their sell job.
you should be thanking me for calling out all the BS.
everdiso is right, though. I can’t imagine why the benefit of the doubt would be given to the most successful franchise in baseball over the past 12 years.
Why isn’t fangraphs waxing optimistic about the Blue Jays, a team now into it’s third straight decade of mediocrity? It’s puzzling, if you ask me.
as long as you admit that the general analysis has a great deal of “benefit of the doubt” in it, then we’re in agreeance.
I called you a child because you refuse to listen and accept truth, instead sticking to your baseless points. I’m not crying, I know you do this for attention (obviously it’s not because you have a great point), so this only feeds that. But, like a child, I hope maybe some day you’ll get smarter.
Your quote from my link is useless. The article itself was hype, so his comment on the level of hype means nothing. The article’s existence is the point. You said no one hyped him before the Sox. I provided two examples. Here’s a third: http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bernie-miklasz/bernie-bytes-respect-for-joe-kelly/article_21fdd837-4248-55a6-9a90-a1f03bc1484f.html
And yes, I expect you to provide a link to the assertion you’re claiming. I’ve looked around and found nothing. I want you to actually back up one of your statements for once.
As for the greatness thing: the point is that he’s got great stuff and bad results, which suggests a tweak would make them match (even though the article doesn’t suggest this is possible, in fact it does the opposite). This didn’t start with his trade: http://www.stlcardinalbaseball.com/what-in-the-world-is-wrong-with-joe-kelly
recap the three “baseless” charges against me:
1. “potential greatness” – in the first sentence of the articke
2. “nobody talked about kelly before he was a red sock” – specifically admitted in your very own link to a cards fanblog
3. “six management lied and claimed they had 5 sp with legit mlb track record” – quote provided.
if you still want to call my claims baseless, when they clearly aren’t, then its clear who the child is.
again, i’m not the one you should be angry at – your anger should be directed at a BSing management and complicit fawning media.
I’ve been writing and podcasting about Joe Kelly for years. And Nate Eovaldi. And Yordano Ventura. There’s no goddam fawning media here. This piece was a self admonishment for falling for it every time I’ve fallen for it in the past, but there’s no mystery to why people care about Joe Kelly. It’s not just fastball velocity, his pitches get good results on the individual level. There is no grand pro-Boston pro-whatever thing going on here. I wrote about a pitcher that interested me. Tomorrow it will be a Tiger.
fair enough.
“tweak away from greatness” describing a 27yr old with his resume really set me off, and imo ties in perfectly with a major problem in red sox analysis specifically, but I apologize for inundating the comments of your well written article with criticism. my bad.
OtM isn’t “a Red Sox site.” They’re one of the best baseball sites on the Internet. They just happen to focus primarily on the Sox.
This is just plain wrong. Many Cardinals fans saw Kelly’s upside, its just becoming less and less likely he reaches it.
te adjustment he needs is moving to bullpen
Or Pawtucket.
What stands out listening to all of his starts is that his 97 mph heat doesn’t miss bats. In his last start he got shelled and was relieved by Matt Barnes, who proceeded to miss plenty of the exact same Twins bats with his 97 mph stuff, striking out 5 in 3.1 IP. Farrell knows a lot more about this stuff than I do but more curveballs is not going to make Kelly’s fastball any less straight.
After yesterday’s start, Farrell said this: “One thing we continue to try to point out to Joe is that he’s learning himself as a pitcher and what makes him most effective.” Clearly this type of learning should not be happening in the big league rotation, esp. when there are plenty of alternatives champing at the bit in AAA. Kelly didn’t start pitching until college and then it was as a reliever, so he’s not as advanced as most 26 year olds. Plenty to dream on but right now it’s still only a dream.
I mean, he spent plenty of time in the minors (with an org far better at developing talent than the Red Sox), and then three years with Dave fucking Duncan.
What epiphany are the PawSox’s pitching coaches going to unlock that Duncan could not?
Dave Duncan wasn’t Kelly’s pitching coach in St. Louis. Duncan left after the 2011 season. Kelly didn’t make it to St. Louis until 2012.
While it’s likely that Duncan spent at least a few minutes with Kelly at some point, Kelly wasn’t even at AAA when Duncan was with the Cardinal organization, and I believe (I’m not certain) that he was never in Spring Training with the major league club until 2012.
That said, baseball history is full of guys with blazing speed who never had anything else to offer. Kelly’s a good kid, but he doesn’t seem like he’s going to be a good major league pitcher.
this is his age 27 season.
continually referring to him as 26 is just deceiving yourself.
Is that really something to get worked up about? He turns 27 in two weeks. Fine. So if he turned 27 in October or November it would make that much of a difference? I don’t care what the Sox FO says about him — what FO would trade for a guy and then say “yeah, we really blew this one”? — the point is he’s not as ready as they hoped and he shouldn’t be figuring things out in the big league rotation, regardless of whether he was born in June or November.
I like your correct use of the phrase ‘champing at the bit.’ Kudos to you. The rest is good too.
Ditto.
Pretty sure Americans use “chomping” b/c with a British accent “champing” sounds a lot like “chomping.”
Kelly, unannounced, strolling over to our WEEI broadcast setup during the Red Sox’ Winter Weekend at Foxwoods, grabbing one of the headsets and then letting out the words, “I want your listeners to know, I’m going to win the Cy Young this year. Just letting everyone know so when I win it you heard it here first.”
Joe Kelly is a goof. He was kidding. Please, everyone who thinks he was serious has to admit they know nothing about Kelly’s personality and history of goofiness.
Yeah. Obviously a joke. The media guide in St Louis said he was a relation of “machine gun” kelly. When asked kelly said that he totally made that up for a laugh. Everytime he would pitch a visiting announcer would mention that he was a relation of machine gun, though he wasn’t.
Or…maybe…he’s just not…good?
Or… maybe… things don’t fall into a binary of good and bad and its interesting to try to find out why a certain result landed something along a spectrum between two extremes using data and… reason?
when you’re a 27yr old who is one of the worst pitchers on one of the worst rotations on one of the worst teams in baseball, with no real track record of success in mlb or milb….
…you are very very close to one end of that spectrum.
sox are dead last in era but 16th in FIP. This is hardly the worst rotation in the MLB. they are average to slightly below average
24th in IP/gs, 22nd in war, 30th in era, 16th in fip, 21st in xfip.
that’s not mediocre.
Isn’t it though? The average position of those stats is 22?
And if you remove ERA which is the flukiest of those stats (I guess) its 20.
Not quite average, but not the worst either, that’s mediocre everdiso.
gavzac, mediocre means average.
…unless it’s a 27 year old who has never had exceptional (or even interesting) results at any level of professional baseball, and whom even Dave Duncan could not manage to help achieve mediocrity.
Wiley Peralta throws hard and isn’t good, either.
No one writes about him, though, just like how no one ever pretended that Joe Kelly was any more interesting than Adam Warren, Brad Hand, Josh Tomlin or any other 5th starter/swingman until the Sox were dumb enough to go into Spring Training with him as the entrenched fifth starter, making the entire site scramble in a vain attempt to differentiate the Sox’s decision to emphasize bats at the expense of pitching from AJ Preller’s much-lambasted decision to emphasize bats at the expense of defense.
well said. i wonder if the writers even realize yet how much their opinions change on a player as soon he’s traded to the sox. suddenly every question mark turns into intriguing potential, every weakness an opportunity to improve.
nobody talked about kelly before he was a red sock. nobody. for good reason. and now we’re getting long detailed analysis wondering why he’s not good. it’s bizarre.
Some tired ass crap. Y’all realize that I write about pitchers on every staff, right? I don’t think there’s a rotation I haven’t written about at least one pitcher? Why doesn’t anyone accuse me of bias since I’ve written like six Andrew Cashner pieces. Just stop.
no offense, eno. you’re a great writer, and far from the only one who seems to be under this red sox spell.
and Cashner is legit interesting. a former legit good prospect with a good milb track record who, aside from injury, is in his 3rd atraight year of being a quality fulltime SP. Kelly is none of that. He’s just some random guy who throws hard who is pitching poorly in a role he didn’t earn on a bad team.
I don’t understand this line of criticism anyway. People always complain that certain players/GMs/teams are written about too much. If you aren’t interested in reading about a certain subject, don’t read about it. And if a writer is predisposed to pay attention to certain teams, so what? You write about the subjects you’re interested in, the subjects you know about, the subjects where your sources are.
On top of that, this isn’t even a piece praising Joe Kelly. It’s a piece about how he’s been told over and over that if he makes a certain adjustment that he’d finally put it all together. And he hasn’t. And I’m interpreting Eno’s last sentence to imply that Farrell’s latest suggestion is not going to be the magical solution either.
Eno, you have my permission to go interview Chris Young four times a season. Even if people complain that he’s a sucky pitcher, he’s a great interview.
no matter how many times you say Joe Kelly pitched for Dave Duncan, it doesn’t change the fact that Duncan left the Cards in 2011, when Kelly was in AA. That seems to be the crux of your argument against him, and well, it’s just plain wrong.
Kelly is legit interesting as well because, on paper, he should be better but he has never been able to make it happen. Some of us find it interesting to look into why that is.
But you seem to only exist to slag the Red Sox so whatever.
Amen Yirmiyahu.
I mean, Peter Freaking Gammons must have had close to 50% of his content on Boston, and more if you count all the references to Bronson Arroyo’s guitar work after he was traded. Should we have bitched about him writing so much about guys who were very accessible to him because he was….wait for it….based in Boston?
Another thing – every time someone fills up the comment section of an article about Boston/Oakland/Dave’s puppy/whatever, you increase the number of comments for that article, which increases the number of clicks for that article, which just makes it MORE profitable for Fangraphs to crank out more articles on the thing you are sick of seeing. Food for thought.
if fangraphs’ aim is to be like Gammons….
Duncan left the Cardinals after the 2011 season. Kelly didn’t get to the majors until 2012. If Dunc worked with Kelly at all in the minors, it was minimal.
If you aren’t interested in reading about a certain subject, don’t read about it.
everdiso is very interested reading about the Red Sox, though. That’s his primary interest on fangraphs. Think about how consistently and immediately he comments on every Sox article – and how many comments about the Sox he makes on articles that aren’t about the Sox. Realize this means he reads the site all day, probably every day, and *almost never comments on anything else*. He never has anything else to say – about anything.
He reads and comments more about them, by far, than his own best-in-baseball Blue Jays. He’s one of those baseball “fans” who derives more pleasure from hating on opponents than rooting for his team.
The moment you realize this is the same moment you recognize he’s to be laughed at, not responded to. Put a dollar in the change cup next to his cardboard ‘RED SUX R BAD’ sign and continue on your way.
In fairness to everdiso, my biggest passion in the NFL is rooting against the Cowboys. If his biggest passion is rooting against the Red Sox, who are we to judge? 😉
That’s fair, Eno. I’ve just never seen anyone even pretend to be interested in Kelly until this year.
Also, no one accused you of bias for Cashner because he’s not only much, much better at baseball than Kelly, but also had genuinely good results in the minors before breaking out with the Pads.
Also, THOR, all these “pitched for Duncan” comments came before the first time I was corrected.
Anyway, “the main crux of my argument against him” is that he isn’t good at pitching, never has been good at pitching at the professional level, and that after even the best run org in baseball couldn’t help him, it’s unlikely that a team who hasn’t developed a league average pitcher since Jon Lester will be able to.
Also…no one outside of the Boston market has read Gammons in years, because he only ever talks about the Sox. If I want that, I’ll read Bob Ryan (or, honestly, Marc and Ben). I don’t read Sal Pal when I can read Jimmy Kempsey, either.
Brilliant insight. I sincerely hope your family dies in a house fire.
Today on “Eno’s People”… another mediocre baseball player.
Hey! Do me a favor! Take tomorrow off. Will just be an interview with a mediocre baseball player.
I wish they could all be “Eno’s People”.
You lied! You interviewed a decidedly non-mediocre baseball player in the form of one Bryce Harper.
Love this stuff. Thanks for helping me figure out WTH is going on with Red Sox pitchers…
Scrambling to recover from a bad offseason plan (with regards to starting pitching). Is WTH is going on.
I saw Kelly live in Toronto a couple weeks ago, and I was shocked at both how good his stuff is, and how bad his command/approach is. The Jays didn’t hit him hard, but he couldn’t find the strike zone, and couldn’t come up with a big pitch when he needed it. I don’t think he threw one breaking ball in the strike zone, yet there were multiple times when he would have a full count on a hitter (in one instance it was Encarnacion, but it happened with at least one other hitter as well), and he would throw a breaking ball in the dirt. Swihart was catching him as well, so I thought maybe it was inexperience on their parts? Maybe someone who watches him more regularly can tell me…does that happen often with Kelly?
He’s never had great K-rates. i get that you only brought up Henry Rodriguez as an example of horrible control, but Rodriguez always had excellent K-rates in the minors too. His “potential” wasn’t just based on velocity but also strikeouts. A guy with below average strikeout rates and below average command just may not have “potential” to be more than serviceable. Has a hard thrower with low K-rates and below average control ever developed into a star after 27 or even 24? The best examples I can think of are Dave Stewart and Joaquin Andujar. Stewart added a forkball, and Andujar became a GB pitcher on the 80s Cardinals. Are there others?
there was this guy named Randy Johnson who fits that description pretty well.
Randy Johnson averaged over a strikeout per inning in the minor leagues, so no, he quite clearly doesn’t fit that description at all.
He also averaged nearly a walk an inning in the minors as well. And in his first seasons his K’s dropped while his walks stayed high.
His first full season in MLB he had a higher BB/9 (5.4) and lower K/9 (7.3) then Joe Kelly has right now (3.6 BB/9, 7.9 K/9). And it didnt really change until his age 27 season.
He may have been a better strikeout guy but had much much worse control issues then Kelly. So yes, he does fit that description.
Bartolo Colon averaged a K per inning in the minors but his 7.6/9 this year is the 3rd best of his career in the majors. He averaged 3.7BB/9 while with Cleveland. Carlos Zambrano?
Joeeee Kelly!
Joe Kelly!
I love ya
Joe Kelly!
You’re always a tweak awayyyyy!
Just in case Red Sox brass read these comments, I want to say that throwing more 4-seamers, especially up, and focusing on getting more Ks is not for everyone. It was exciting to watch pitchers make Mike Trout look silly this way the 2nd half of 2014. But I feel the Red Sox are making Joe Kelly and Rick Porcello worse with the more 4-seamers, more up approach. Especially playing in the AL East, let ground ball pitchers make it take 4 hits to score; or 4 hits plus walks in Kelly’s case. The best approach I have heard in regard to Kelly 2015 is to perhaps slightly under throw, sacrificing 1 or 2 MPH for increased command. Control will always be the key to his success, which is challenging given his velocity and movement. I hope Joe can step to the next level. Either way, the baseball world will never give up on him because in addition to all the physical tools, he is as mentally tough as they come (an ice water guy).
I saw Kelly dominate the Orioles late last season, and I was definitely worried that he would be good this season. But I have casually watched his results this season and have been (happily) surprised at how bad he’s been. I understand the hype, though, since I have seen him at his best. I thought the Red Sox were overhyping their rotation’s potential coming into 2015, but I didn’t think that Kelly would be an example of that.
To be fair, it wasn’t only the Red Sox overstating their own rotation’s potential coming into 2015.
Interesting stuff. Perhaps Kelly is receiving too much advice? It sounds like everyone is pulling him in all sorts of different directions, trying out different things to see what sticks. That can mess with a player’s head, especially if none of those suggestions are working out so well. I can only assume it’s shaking Kelly’s confidence, thereby exacerbating his pitching problems. Not that Kelly shouldn’t be given advice, but it should remain consistent among those advising him.
Wow, a lot of nonsense in this comment thread. Some thoughts to share:
— Here’s why Joe Kelly matters: go the FG stats section sort SPs by velocity, that list includes some of the best SPs in the game, but also has 3 notable WTFs — Joe Kelly, Nate Eovaldi, and Wily Peralta. But with Peralta and Eovaldi, you can see the problem is low K% — neither really has swing and miss secondary stuff. Between them, their best out pitch gets them a mid-teens SwStr%, which is somewhat middling. Kelly on the other hand has the legit out pitch….so it seems to be a mystery why he can’t put it all together. I mean at a minimum, he should look like a Matt Moore type, where he has trouble with the strike zone, doesn’t last long in games, but is hard to hit. Instead he’s getting rocked consistently….that’s cause to dig deeper.
— This Red Sox bias is nonsense too. I read everything Eno writes and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Joe Kelly was a big deal before being traded after putting up a 2.69 ERA in STL and as the key trade chip for Lackey, who was valuable both for the playoff run and for his ridiculously cheap 2015 option.
— There is also a scouting piece to this that I’d be interesting in hearing from hitters on. I remember playing against a kid form Rice in college that threw 94, we were scared as hell watching him warm up, but when you stepped in the box the ball was just easy to pick-up out of his hand. We racked up 8 runs in 4 innings. Maybe Kelly has the opposite problem of guys like Fiers and Cingrani, where his fastball is just easy to pick up.
Watching NE pitch against KC the other day, all throughout the first inning Schilling and Kruk kept commenting that NE doesn’t/won’t pitch inside, even with upper 90s velocity, and that KC hitters looked really comfortable.
Generally, you take what broadcasters say with a grain of salt becuase the vast majority of the time it’s coming from a position of hindsight where the broadcaster is always going to be right. But, they were saying it throughout. At one point, Schilling observed that the way NE finishing his mechanics, the ball naturally stays to the outside of the plate (very slow rear leg swing), at least to lefties (which KC seem to have a bunch of).
So now the Red Sox are calling themselves the NE Red Sox of Boston?
Boy are they attention whores!
NE = Nate Eovaldi.
Probably the only thing worth listening to Curt Schilling talk about is pitching. Guy was always a student of the game in that way and definitely knows his stuff.
Yeah. Curt’s a Dick, but he’s awesome to have in the booth for stuff like this.
there are likely plenty of other pitchers who could sit amongst the velo leaders if their team were willing to put up with a 6+ era.
Maybe you should submit a piece about these pitchers. Or start a blog! You produce enough “content” already that it shouldn’t really be a problem.
I mean, If Eovaldi’s breaking stuff isn’t as good as Kelly’s, it’s better. As Eno detailed in another article.
The main difference is that Eo is two years younger, has actually had success in his professional career, and spent his minor league career with the Dodgers, rather than the Cardinals.
Gotta get me some Funky Cold Medina. Haven’t had the chance to be Horizontal Loc in like forever.
Joe Kelly: Perennially a Flaming Moe Away
why do people continue to feed everdiso.it’s quite obvious that is only reason for being on FanGraphs is to incite arguments and troll. that being said, I feel like an improved change-up would do as much as throwing his curveball more wood
I didn’t even know everdiso had a changeup. What is it, rationality?
Plus one!
When I last checked, Kelly’s problems in 2015 seem to be when pitching from the stretch. It’s not just BABIP but K/BB ratios are quite different when comparing the bases empty split to the runners on split.
This is the new version of me. Throwing hard but no success…
Eno, sorry if I’ve been a dick. I love most of your articles like this. I just feel like FG has been bizarrely inundated in Joe Kelly stuff recently, even beyond your normal “why isn’t this guy good” stuff, so I guess I unfairly lumped this in with those.
Where have you been seeing these articles?
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=9761&position=P
Hm. Maybe it was just Carson’s (which also fits his MO). But there were also a few “What’s wrong with the Sox rotation?” articles wondering why Kelly hadn’t magically become better than he’d ever been before.
It ain’t worth much but my opinion on Kelly is that he is that he is relying too much on his incredible (even for the MLB) athleticism. I would wager he is “trying to locate his pitches too much” and not “letting it happen”… That is why he can throw strikes but not get the corners… He can do damn near anything with ease that can be done “on purpose”… But painting the corners isn’t done on purpose…
I mean, look, the guy gets radically different advice and then just kinda walks out and executes it with ease… Hey Joe, throw more fourseamers up today. Sure boss. And then he just walks out and does it. Hey Joe, throw the slider more. Sure boss. And then he just walks out and does it. Hey Joe, throw the curve. Sure boss. And then he just walks out and does it.
It is absurd.
Full disclaimer:
1. I’m a die hard Yankee fan
2. I’m a big fan of Eno’s work
However, and maybe this is just confirmation bias, but I do feel like a disproportionate amount of FG articles are focused upon various Red Sox issues. And the general tone always seems to be that they’re thisssssss close to being as great as predicted in these (digital) pages.
It’s called CYA. I would say it’s not FanGraph’s fault, since all of baseball media was infatuated with the Sox, but FanGraphs is supposed to be the site that’s *better* than mainstream baseball media. Unfortunately, at least as far as the Red Sox are concerned, it doesn’t seem to be the case.
True. But they more than make up for it with their objective and even handed approach towards Beane and his A’s.
everdiso is right, though. I can’t imagine why the benefit of the doubt would be given to the most successful franchise in baseball over the past 12 years.
Why isn’t fangraphs waxing optimistic about the Blue Jays, a team now into it’s third straight decade of mediocrity? It’s puzzling, if you ask me.
You’re right. It’s crazy that people aren’t giving the Cardinals the benefit of the doubt for giving up on Kelly.
From 2003-2014, Boston tops the Cardinals 3 World Series titles to 2, while St. Louis has more pennants, 4-3, more total playoff appearances (8-7) and victories (54-45), and a few more regular season games — but of course the A.L. East has generally been much tougher than the NLC over that span. So… let’s call it a draw. At least we can all agree that they’ve both been better than [your most hated team here].
So nice Tim posted it twice.
as long as you admit that the general sox analysis has been rife with “giving the benefit of the doubt”, then we’re in agreeance.
Mediocrity was too generous, I guess. After all, they currently have the same record as “one of the worst teams in baseball.”
there’s a lot of interesting angles or factors to what makes a promising young pitcher either take the next step towards stardom or just totally get lost and become “organizational depth”….., The case of Kelly is interesting because he was probably “hand picked” by Farrell after the 2013 post season as a guy that could easily become an Ace, with some tweaking and experience, etc…, granted it was a small sample size, 13/14 starts.., but what Kelly did in 2nd half of 2013 @ what?, 24, in the middle of pennant race, probably caught the attention of Red Sox’s brass as a guy that “we need to get”, as soon as we get a chance…, you can’t denied the 1.91 ERA, 9-2 record, plus the fact that Mathenny and Yadier or whoever’s decision of throwing Kelly out there in October somehow “paid off” in him pitching in big games and giving his team a chance to win , in the playoffs, maybe , in Kelly’s case, that’s what Farrell was talking about when saying “proven arm or so”… the other guys fit the “200 Ip, yada yada yada” profile….., It’s seems Farrell is the type of guy that will listen to his Hitters(Ortiz, Pedroia, Napoli, etc) when assesing a young rival pitcher, like that, maybe this guys said something like, ” this dude Kelly is a stud in the making.., get him!!”….Eno does an amazing job of decompossing every aspect of player evaluation down to grips or release points, break of pitches, etc.., that could give us an edge on finding the “next” Kluber or Arrieta, BEFORE they actually become the “next” Kluber or Arrieta…., Thanks Eno!!!