BOSTON — Joe Kelly is nearly 600 innings into his major league career and an impending free agent. He’s a week away from his 30th birthday. He’s been a starter and he’s been a reliever. He’s been a bust, or at the least, a disappointment — even with a strong 2017 season. He’s a triple-digit radar gun threat, and at last, he's more than a threat. He's more than potential.
The Red Sox reliever, with the return of his changeup, has achieved three things this season: One, he's provided the Sox much needed late-inning certainty. They’d still do well to add a reliever at the deadline, but Kelly has been a rock the Sox needed, particularly now that Carson Smith is out.
Two, Kelly has raised his expected payday this winter exponentially. There’s no better year to evolve from a project to a reliable product than the year before you hit free agency.
Three, Kelly has reinforced a point that remains forgotten usually until it stares people in the face: top talents can round into form with the benefit of time. Sometimes it takes considerable time. Patience. And Kelly was easy to write off as bound for mediocrity at many points.
MORE RED SOX:
“This is a different Joe Kelly,” Sox manager Alex Cora said on Tuesday night, after Kelly escaped a seventh-inning jam with a filthy changeup to the Blue Jays' Kevin Pillar. “We can throw the numbers out of the window. This a lot different. Slider. Curveball. Changeup. Fastball up. I really don’t go by the match-up with the numbers [when bringing in relievers]. I just go by the match-up with the stuff, and right now, his stuff is way up there. If we’re talking about relievers, he’s way up there. His stuff is up there. He’s one of the best.”
Opponents are in an 0-for-23 stretch against Kelly, with a couple of walks and a hit batsmen mixed in. He’s allowed just one run in his last 24 outings, becoming a greater fan favorite along the way because of a brawl with the Yankees and a T-shirt that threw Al Horford some love.
Boston Red Sox
On a team stacked with stars — just look at the Sox lineup — Kelly is a dose of the unexpected. J.D. Martinez was supposed to rake. Xander Bogaerts, who hit a moonshot on Tuesday, was supposed to rebound.
Indeed, Kelly was, at one time, supposed to be this good. But eventually, public opinion settles: you are what you are. Players always can evolve, sure, but how much?
In Kelly’s case, a ton. He’s helped the Red Sox tremendously, and he’s looking like a pitcher who might cost a team with an already high payroll a lot of money to retain beyond this year. But if you ever stopped believing Kelly would get to this point, six years after his major league debut, you weren't foolish. Kelly's not the norm. Today, he's become a reminder the norm should sometimes be ignored.
MORE RED SOX: