Austin Riley’s really good. Let’s establish that. 33 home runs this year. 6.1 bWAR. 4.2 fWAR. Been great in the postseason too. Two long balls. At least a hit in every game. Two hits in each of the games with a homer.
Yes, Austin Riley is great at the game of baseball.
And Joe Kelly struck his ass out.
It was another night for our guy, who keyed a Dodgers seventh-inning rally with his inspirational sixth inning of work, following up the strikeout of Riley by inducing routine outs from noted bad bitch/bad motherfucker Joc Pederson and noted good baseball player (he’s a pro!) Adam Duvall. He topped out at 97 mph, relying heavily on the knuckle curve (he seems a bit worn down), and he’ll now have a day off before Game 3 starts up. So, as we enter the off-day, a point:
This is going a lot like 2018.
In 2018, Kelly entered the postseason as one of Alex Cora’s last options. He exited it as close to the first option. So far? He’s clearly somewhere like sixth on the Dodgers’ pecking order, behind Jansen, Treinen, Scherzer if Scherzer so much as asks, Graterol, and Urías if Dave Roberts has been given too much time to think and the front office didn’t explicitly tell him “no.”
He’s rising.
We’ll see how high he goes.
