It was a tune-up outing. That’s the thing to remember about Joe Kelly’s appearance last night in the second inning of a Dodgers bullpen game. The other thing to remember? After the outing started poorly, he got his command under him and finished with a nice pair of K’s.
A lot of baseball fans don’t understand how baseball works. They get that starting pitchers occasionally allow runs, but they expect every reliever to have a 0.00 ERA. This is silly, and those who complain about Joe Kelly’s performance should probably be excommunicated from something important to them, like the church of pooping your pants and being a humongous whiner.
Yes, I know, his command wasn’t great at the outset. But this is Joe Kelly we’re talking about! Command is not the point. Add in how he’s still coming back from the IL and still getting used to pitching with his old form, and command is really not the point. It’ll come. He’ll have a few more outings, and then the magic of October will fill our breasts and his. We’ll see him strike out Fernando Tatís Jr. with the bases loaded. He will roar, for he will have won. We will roar, for we will have seen our warrior conquer again.
It’s even possible that someone else will have loaded those bases in the first place.
We talked about release point after Joe Kelly’s last outing. It was similar last night to what it was on Wednesday. Still higher and closer to his body than what we’ve often seen from him this year. I think that’s a good sign about his health, but we will as always keep scouring the news for glimmers and hints as to how our man is holding up physically. That is our duty. To ourselves, to you, to God, and to Joe Kelly.
