Like Travis Henderson in 1984’s Paris, Texas, Merrill Kelly left his dwelling, wandered throughout the desert, and finally realized he wanted to go again the place he got here from. On Sunday morning, Ken Rosenthal reported that Kelly was finalizing a two-year, $40 million contract to return to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Kelly is as Arizona as a cactus in a yard pool. (Meg tells me they sometimes aren’t truly in the pool, however what I imply.) He went to highschool in Scottsdale, a pair dozen miles northeast of Chase Discipline. After a stint at Yavapai Neighborhood School, he transferred to Arizona State to complete up his faculty profession. Drafted by the Rays, Kelly shuttled off to Korea for 4 years in his 20s earlier than returning to make his MLB debut for the Diamondbacks in 2019. He has spent his whole main league profession in Arizona, save for a two month sojourn to Texas following a midseason commerce on the 2025 deadline. Maybe scandalized by Arlington’s full lack of any public transit — not even a single bus line! — he stored his time with the Rangers quick. In Phoenix, he’ll return because the presumptive ace on the unlikely age of 37 and with the unlikely fastball velocity of 91.8 mph.
There might be evaluation of Kelly’s recreation to return, however his attraction is well summarized: The man can simply pitch. Sure, his fastball sits about three ticks slower than the common right-handed pitcher. And certain, his stuff metrics are nothing to write down dwelling about. However even with these clear limitations, Kelly succeeds as a result of he does two extraordinarily essential issues: He locates the ball, and he makes it unattainable for hitters to guess which pitch is coming.
The command bit is straightforward sufficient to see from his FanGraphs participant web page. Kelly’s 6.4% stroll fee ranked within the seventieth percentile amongst all pitchers with a minimum of 80 innings pitched this season. In contrast to a lot of his friends, Kelly can’t readily problem hitters with fastballs over the guts of the plate in hitter’s counts. His stuff requires finesse, pitching on the perimeters, aiming for tremendous targets. Given these circumstances, Kelly’s above-average stroll charges are extra spectacular than they may appear at first look.
The unpredictability facet requires extra digging. As his pitch plot exhibits, Kelly throws three fastballs — a four-seamer , sinker, and cutter — all in the identical quadrant:
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Even the cutter strikes arm facet (and, it ought to be famous, carried out spectacularly in 2025, permitting a .262 xwOBA on contact with equal utilization to each righties and lefties). Kelly’s major pitches — save for the changeup — all transfer in the same tunnel.
He additionally mixes his pitches in addition to anybody. To righties, he throws 5 pitches with practically similar frequency. At 21% utilization, his cutter is his most-used pitch to righties; at 19%, his sinker is his fourth most-used pitch. He leans extra closely on his changeup to lefties (extra on that pitch later), however at 32% utilization, he’s not precisely spamming it.
These tendencies make Baseball Prospectus’s arsenal metrics smile upon him. As a fast reminder, BP launched these metrics in January of this yr; they grew to become obtainable on the positioning’s leaderboards earlier this offseason. They grade a pitcher alongside 4 standards: Motion Unfold, Velocity Unfold, Pitch Sort Likelihood and Shock Issue. Whereas Kelly grades out poorly within the former two classes, he excels within the latter two. His pitch kind chance — primarily, a median of how probably a hitter is to determine which pitch is coming — was 52.2%, thirteenth among the many 274 pitchers with a minimum of 1,000 pitches thrown. He’s precisely what you think about from a slow-throwing veteran right-hander: an enormous pitch combine, and a willingness to throw any pitch in any depend to any kind of hitter.
Kelly’s unpredictability is the perfect clarification for his continued success at suppressing injury. Since 2022, he’s allowed only a .270 BABIP, ninth greatest amongst pitchers with 500 innings pitched over that time period. These historic BABIP suppressing qualities make an argument for Kelly being a smidge higher than his FIP-based WAR, which — exterior of his injury-shortened 2024 — has completed between 3.1 and three.2 every year of the aforementioned timeframe.
No evaluation of Kelly will be full with out a dialogue of his greatest pitch. Historically, the best changeup strikes precisely like a pitcher’s four-seam fastball with as a lot velocity distinction as doable. (That is what’s known as a “straight change.”) By these requirements, Kelly’s changeup does every little thing mistaken. He throws it over 88 mph on common, simply three ticks slower than his heater, with virtually 15 inches of distinction in vertical motion. (Try the hole between the pink and inexperienced dots on the pitch plot above.) This energy change — nearer to a splitter by its motion traits — is nonetheless efficient, racking up gaudy whiff charges (33.4% final yr) at the same time as Kelly throws it greater than every other pitch.
So long as he’s wholesome, Kelly has confirmed he can ship above-average manufacturing even with subpar stuff, making the Diamondbacks’ $40 million wager a comparatively secure one. Positive, he’s virtually definitely not getting Cy Younger votes, however he’s additionally practically a lock to ship a FIP within the excessive 3.00s or low 4.00s with probability of a good higher ERA.
That might be simply tremendous for the Diamondbacks, whose rotation depth was trying a little bit shaky after the departure of Zac Gallen in free company. Even with the addition of Kelly (in addition to Michael Soroka final week), Steamer nonetheless sees the crew’s pitching as comfortably inside the backside 10. As a franchise, they’re in a liminal state between Wild Card contender and rebuilder; in the event that they finally determine to carry on to Ketel Marte and make a go of it, they’re in want of as many dependable innings as they’ll get their arms on.
Their potential to meaningfully improve past Kelly, nonetheless, could also be constrained by prior outlays. Corbin Burnes might be making $33 million to rehab his torn UCL for almost all of subsequent season. Eduardo Rodriguez will make precisely as a lot as Kelly over the following two years, and posted an ERA over 5.00 in every of his two earlier seasons in Arizona. Brandon Pfaadt is locked right into a deal till 2030; whereas he definitely has upside, he’s but to ship an efficient massive league marketing campaign. Even with Jordan Montgomery’s contract off the books, it’s exhausting to think about them locking in one other high-priced arm at a deal of appreciable size, particularly since even average-ish beginning pitching is evidently going for large bucks on the open market. Kelly secured the second-biggest assure issued this offseason, trailing Dylan Stop’s $210 million by a stable margin. If Kelly’s contract is any indication, Michael King is more likely to blow previous his crowdsourced estimate of a $22 million AAV; Framber Valdez, Ranger Suárez, and Tatsuya Imai are all equally licking their chops. With Ryne Nelson slotted in as an inexpensive and efficient mid-rotation possibility and Kelly now in tow, the Diamondbacks rotation seems nearly locked in.