Cool, calm, collected, Cy Young hopeful Joe Kelly. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Before the season started, Joe Kelly predicted that he would win the AL Cy Young Award. Obviously he made this claim tongue-in-cheek, but I think he really had high expectations for himself. Clearly things haven’t worked out that way for him given his ineffectiveness and eventual demotion in the middle of the season, but August has been a different story.
Pumpsie went 6-0 with a 2.68 ERA this month, finally living up to some of that tantalizing potential. The difference can mainly be attributed to mixing in a much higher percentage of offspeed pitches and trusting his defense.
Yesterday, he held the first-place Mets to one run in 7.1 innings, out-dueling Jacob deGrom and again inducing 14 groundouts. I say again because that’s the exact number of groundouts he got in his last outing against the White Sox. This outing was very similar in many ways. Yesterday:
| Pitchers | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kelly (W, 8-6) | 7.1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4.94 |
Against Chicago:
| Pitchers | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kelly (W, 7-6) | 7.1 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 5.18 |
I think the 14 groundouts in each start is the key. I don’t know if he’s intentionally pitching to contact and trusting his defense to make plays like this double play by Brock Holt!, this ranging play by Bogaerts, and this diving stop by Sandoval:
But if he is, it seems to be working. It’ll be interesting to see if this trend continues for the rest of the season.
The offense was provided by an RBI double by the Panda, a fielder’s choice by Holt, and this shooting star of a homerun by Mookie.
Jean Machi had a perfect 9th for the save.
Notes:
-Red Sox have played their best against the best this season. Add Harvey and deGrom to the list of aces they’ve beaten in 2015. Which is cool, but also frustrating because this team had a lot of potential that they didn’t live up to. They’re trying to and add one more to the list today, as they face off with Noah Syndergaard right now, trying for a sweep.