It was a big day in the Joe Kelly Universe.
First, in the morning, Rob Bradford released this interview with our hero on Baseball Isn’t Boring. It’s worth listening to in full, but the short version is that Joe Kelly and the Dodgers training staff broke through. The relief pitcher is free of pain for the first time in three years. What does this mean? Well, that brings us to our second thing.
Second, in the evening, Joe Kelly returned from the IL, setting the Marlins down 1–2–3 in the sixth inning of what would become an 8–4 Dodgers victory. To a layperson, it might not have meant much, but to hitting coaches around the National League, the development sent a chill down the spine. They’d hoped they could navigate October without having to worry about this monster rising up from the deep. Now? Joe Kelly is back. Expect a lot more losses from Wild Card contenders these next eleven days as they ponder whether there’s any point to even trying to reach the NLDS.
We were curious about release point, since the hope accompanying painless Joe Kelly is that he’ll be able to throw more naturally again. Per Statcast, his release was more than an inch higher than his season average despite throwing a higher portion of fastballs than usual (his offspeed tends to come with a higher release point, so in outings with more fastballs, his release should track lower than the mean). This isn’t a huge difference—his release points were all within the window of what else we’ve seen from him this season, and it’ll take a larger sample to see how his delivery is post-breakthrough. Still, encouraging. He looked comfortable out there.
I know you want to know about the velocity, because this is Joe Kelly and Joe Kelly throws gas. It was a little below his season average. But, obviously, he was still throwing gas. This is Joe Kelly we’re talking about.
The big news from the podcast was that vanquishing the pain has changed our hero’s feelings on retirement. He’s spoken before about considering retirement, only to be pushed by Ashley Kelly, his wife, to keep pitching. From the sounds of it now, if our guy isn’t in pain, we might get a few more years of watching him pitch. Potentially monumental news for those of us wanting our children to see the greatest of all time perform his craft.
The Dodgers have one more in Miami late this afternoon. From there, it’s back to L.A. to host the Rockies. The bullpen should be pretty fresh, so I don’t know if we’ll see our guy today, but having thrown only ten pitches, it’s possible he’s available. Dave Roberts has turned to Kelly pretty quickly following recent IL returns.
