The MLB Playoffs have been going on all week (ok there were two days of games), but the Joe Kelly Playoffs start tomorrow, and I would imagine some of you want to know the difference.
The Joe Kelly Playoffs are the special club inside the club. The roped-off area. They’re part of the MLB Playoffs, but they’re better. Like chocolate milk inside the world of milk.
Joe Kelly is a playoff legend. He’s appeared in 40 playoff games. He’s struck out 53 playoff batters. He has yet to register a playoff balk. Up until last year, he’d appeared in six straight playoffs, and in 2020 he won his second World Series, allowing Mookie Betts to return the favor after carrying Betts to the 2018 title (look it up, Joe Kelly was second only to Steve Pearce in how he impacted that ’18 series). Joe Kelly is one of fourteen active players with two titles to his name. If he wins a third, he and Betts will lead the pack alone.
On the mound, you usually see one of two Joes Kelly when it comes to performance. One is a little shaky and a little wild, a rollercoaster of a relief pitcher. This one’s very exciting, and still usually strikes guys out, but he makes for a white-knuckle experience. The other is dominant. Absolutely dominant. 2018 World Series dominant. That Joe Kelly throws gas, clips corners, and twists offspeed that makes hitters weaker in the knees than Kirk Gibson after a date with Lawrence Taylor at RFK Stadium. Joe Kelly is streaky, which means we often see one Joe Kelly or the other for an extended stretch. Lately? Well, what if I told you that over the back half of September our guy didn’t allow a hit, only walked one man, and struck out half the twenty batters he faced?
That’s what we’re looking forward to, tomorrow and over the weeks to come.
Game 1 of the Joe Kelly Playoffs comes at Dodger Stadium on a Saturday night, our man backing up Clayton Kershaw against Los Angeles’s NL West rival, the Arizona Diamondbacks. I don’t think there’s any existing beef between Kelly and the Diamondbacks. He’s faced Evan Longoria the most of anyone on the roster, striking him out four times in their regular season meetings, but it’s a limited sample. If there is to be beef—and we don’t necessarily want that, we kind of like this iteration of the Diamondbacks—it’ll have to be fresh.
Thanks to the cadence of days off, it’s possible we could see Joe Kelly in every game of the Division Series. Game 2 is Monday. Game 3 is Wednesday. Games 4 and 5, if Joe Kelly allows those to happen, are on Thursday and next Saturday. I’m not sure we’ll see him on back to back nights unless straits are dire, but the expectation is that the Dodgers are going to use a ton of bullpen this postseason, and as I understand it, bullpen is a code word for Joe Kelly. The Dodgers are going to use a lot of Joe Kelly over the course of these playoffs. They didn’t trade for him just so they could watch Lance Lynn pound Bud Heavy after every clinching game (as impressive as that is).
If the Dodgers get through the Diamondbacks, it’s either the Braves or the Phillies in the NLCS. Again, there’s no existent beef there, to my knowledge. A doomsday scenario for the Joe Kelly Blogosphere would be a quarrel erupting between him and the Phillies, given our longstanding love for Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, and the city of Philadelphia, but something tells me that won’t happen. If it does? It’ll at least be between worthy foes. A Joe Kelly spat with the Braves? That sounds more fun. We’re on our way to the Braves being hateable, and more in an Astros way than the 90s Yankees. I would not mind seeing Joe Kelly take the soul out of an Atlanta crowd.
Across the leagues, there of course await the Astros and Carlos Correa, playing on separate teams. We don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but Joe Kelly in the World Series against either of those two entities would be quite a sight. There is a non-zero chance Houston would get itself evicted from the United States for being too salty. Even if it’s the Twins playing! If Joe Kelly is in the World Series, it doesn’t matter if the Astros are involved. Astros fans, to the extent they exist (it’s really impressive to occasionally be considered a small-market team in the 4th-biggest city in the country), are more tuned in to Joe Kelly than they are to the Astros. Astros fans are obsessed with Joe Kelly. Joe Kelly is the Astros’ World Series.
Besides Correa, the nemesis to keep an eye on is Kevin Pillar, of all people. Joe Kelly has faced Pillar in the regular season more than any other batter in these playoffs, and Pillar has admittedly done well, reaching base ten times in 26 appearances. On the other end, Robbie Grossman is Joe Kelly’s bitch. Apologies for the terminology, but there is not another word for it. Joe Kelly owns Robbie Grossman. Eleven plate appearances, only two hits, five strikeouts. Other bitches of Joe Kelly? Mauricio Dubón (predictably on the Astros) and Marcell Ozuna (the guy who once iconically faceplanted onto the warning track at Busch Stadium and also the guy who did some other stuff we’re going to let you look up on your own if you’re not familiar). Kelly’s faced Dubón and Ozuna a combined ten times. Six strikeouts, one bullshit single Dubón will eventually have to apologize before God for accepting. (It was a chopper this May where Andrew Vaughn—bless Andrew Vaughn’s soul—went for the ball instead of covering first base. The White Sox won the game.) In short? If Kelly faces Correa or Pillar, there’s history on the line. If Kelly faces Grossman or Ozuna or Dubón, don’t be surprised if they curl up in a corner of the batter’s box and ask the ump if they can go down to the nurse’s office and get their temperature taken.
It isn’t a good playoff preview without predictions, so here’s the best we’ve got:
- NLDS: Dodgers over Diamondbacks 3–0; Joe Kelly 1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 5 SO, 0 HR
- NLCS: Dodgers over Braves 4–0; Joe Kelly 2.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 6 SO, 0 HR
- WS: Dodgers over Orioles 4–3; Joe Kelly 5.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 12 SO, 0 HR
- World Series MVP: Joe Kelly
Keeping expectations low.
