Boston Red Sox: Is Joe Kelly the Closer of the Future?

Boston Red Sox pitcher Joe Kelly’s sudden dominance out of the bullpen could open up some intriguing doors for the team in the future.

Every player enters a season with high hopes and optimism, but Boston Red Sox pitcher Joe Kelly set an eyebrow-raising bar for himself at the start of 2015. The right-hander boldly predicted he would win the American League Cy Young Award that year. You can’t really fault confidence in a professional athlete, but it was certainly an audacious statement coming from a hurler who had just put up a 4.20 ERA in his third big league season.

The 2015 campaign was anything but Cy Young caliber for Kelly. Over 134.1 innings, he posted a 4.82 ERA, 1.44 WHIP and 2.24 K/BB ratio. He became sort of the emblem of a Sox team that began the year with ambitious expectations, only to finish in last place in the AL East. Kelly’s struggles continued into 2016, as he owned an 8.46 ERA after six starts. At that point, Boston had little choice but to send him down to the minors to work things out.

For Kelly, getting himself back on track meant pitching out of the bullpen. In 17 appearances (13 of them in relief) for Triple-A Pawtucket, the 28-year-old managed a 1.54 ERA and 1.00 WHIP over 35 frames. Perhaps even more impressively, he produced an 11.8 K/9 rate while maintaining a 1.5 BB/9. Ingredients of an effective reliever.

When the Red Sox called Kelly back up in late July, it was to continue in his new relief role. And much to their satisfaction, the dominance continued as well. In 11 appearances since July 25, Kelly has been virtually unflappable, allowing just a single earned run over 12.1 frames (0.73 ERA). He has struck out 12 and walked five over that span, while limiting opponents to a .217/.294/.283 slash line.

This isn’t exactly a new narrative in baseball. Many otherwise talented pitchers who experience difficulty as starters look completely different out of the bullpen. Whether it’s an uptick in velocity or the ability to focus on fewer pitches in your repertoire, entering the game for a short stint instead of the long haul often changes a pitcher’s approach.

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As Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal points out, Kelly’s fastball has been averaging 98-99 mph as a reliever, up from around 95-96 as a starter. Many great relievers throw one, maybe two pitches almost exclusively, so Kelly has been able to focus on his reinvigorated heater while also mixing in an increasingly nasty curveball. The other two pitches he used as a starter (changeup and slider) have all but fallen to the wayside, but doing so seems to have simplified things, and it’s hard to argue with the results so far.

MacPherson does mention that neither Kelly nor the Sox are ruling out a return to the rotation in the future; it seems like that’s still in the cards for 2017. But there is reason to believe that keeping Kelly in the bullpen could be beneficial to the club moving forward.

Some of Boston’s key relievers will be eligible for free agency this offseason: Koji Uehara, Junichi Tazawa and Brad Ziegler. None are exactly slam dunks to be retained. Uehara seems the likeliest bet, though it’s worth keeping in mind that he’ll be 42 next year. In any case, with some variables to be addressed in the bullpen, Kelly could help solidify things there regardless of what happens.

If Kelly continues to prove himself in the later innings, he could perhaps even get the chance to close at some point. After a somewhat shaky start, Craig Kimbrel has really settled in as closer during his first year with the Red Sox. However, given the exorbitant prices paid on the trade market this year for high-end relievers, it might not be the craziest thing in the world for the Sox to at least listen to offers for him at next season’s deadline, even assuming they’re in playoff contention. Kimbrel is under contract through next year with a $13 million team option for 2018. Having an effective Joe Kelly ready to slide into the ninth inning could make such a move feasible.

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There are a lot of hypotheticals in this situation, though, the main one being that Kelly still has a ways to go to demonstrate that his bullpen dominance is for real. And that could be complicated if the Red Sox indeed give him another go in the rotation next spring. But for now, the team has to be thrilled with what he’s been doing in relief lately. He could be an important name for manager John Farrell to call upon this October.

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