Joe Kelly recorded his first save of the season to close out the White Sox's 5-2 victory over the Royals on Sunday, and if Pedro Grifol operated his bullpen with a standard hierarchy, Kelly would receive most of the save attempts from here on out, if not all of them.
Kelly has retired 26 of the 27 batters he's faced in May, including his last 16. The exception was Mauricio Dubon, and that hit wasn't quite legit. He reached on a chopper that rose three stories and lured Kelly and Andrew Vaughn to the same spot on the diamond, and Grifol blamed the first baseman after the game.
It wouldn't be the only time this month that a batted ball in Vaughn's proximity was the lone blemish of an otherwise perfect performance. Kelly has to settle for this line instead: 8.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 12 K.
This Kelly was seldom seen last year, when injuries delayed his debut until May, and held him from working consecutive days until July. He had a few hot pockets where it all clicked, but the scoreless-outings streaks he managed to build were bookended by clusters of failures that nullified any progress, which is how you end up with a 6.08 ERA.
In 2023, Kelly is damn near invincible. He's working on a career-long streak of 11 walkless appearances, and there appears to be zero risk in filling up the zone.
Kelly's always been a stuff monster, so this is the kind of run he's always been theoretically capable of. There's a reason why the White Sox gave him a two-year, $17 million contract, even if there were also reasons not to.
I suppose it's not surprising that Kelly is good, but it's shocking that Kelly has strung together eight appearances without smearing a speed bump and shattering his skid plate. The rogue relapses that drain confidence are nowhere to be found.
It's natural to have questions. Mainly:
What gives, Joe Kelly?
It seems like Kelly has focused on making his primary pitches as nasty as they can possibly be. That sounds a little trite -- why wouldn't a pitcher do that -- but it's reflected in the way he throws his primary fastball and breaking ball.
Regarding his two-seamer, he's throwing it from a lower arm slot than the rest of his pitches ...
... and it's lower in May than it was in April. Whatever he loses in tunneling, he gains in run. He's averaging 18.3 inches of horizontal movement on his sinker, and he's been hitting 20 or more with regularity as of late.
And while he throws his changeup from a higher slot than his sinker, it's lower than its old self, and it's enjoying a little extra fade as well.
Statcast also shows that his primary breaking ball has shifted from a curve to a slider. It's hard to know exactly which is which when watching him a pitch at a time because he has the tendency to crack 90 mph with both, but this new breaking ball has rounded up to 95 a couple of times, with a shorter, later vertical break.
Only Houston's Hunter Brown has thrown more 94 mph sliders than Kelly -- he holds an 11-to-7 edge -- but this is something that Kelly just started doing, so it wouldn't surprise me if he eventually took the lead in this category.
Kelly also seems to enjoy exploiting the opaque decorum of the pitch clock, ranging from quick pitches to tripling up on leg pumps, while stalling out at crane poses in between. He sees multiple benefits:
“I only enhanced it because the chirping I get for it has made me really happy so now I just do it even more,” Kelly said. “With good teams right now who know how to pick pitches and if you’re tipping the way to stop tipping is to get good at it or do something different every time. I’m taking the other route. I’m doing something different every time so you physically cannot tip if you’re doing something different every single time. That’s just given me confidence to throw my pitches over the plate with hitters not knowing what’s coming.”
The chirping is fun but the triple-leg kick is beneficial with the pitch clock as well.
“It factors in a ton,” Kelly continued. “There was a pitch the other day where the pitch clock was running out and I wanted to get my fourth pitch and I kept shaking. I had leg kicked and started my mechanics still shaking, still shaking, still shaking, and then I pitched. I had time to pretty much get to the pitch I wanted mid-leg kick.”
It speaks volumes about Kelly's athleticism that he's able to put the first part of his delivery on "shuffle" while making major strides in location. He's gone from posting a career-low zone rate (43 percent) to a career-best (53.8) out of the gate, and he's throwing first-pitch strikes more than two-thirds of the time (68.9 percent).
Count leverage looks like it's doing wonders for him, because his chase rate has surged to nearly 40 percent when he'd never reached 30 percent in any previous season.
I'm a little bit reluctant to try to sum up Kelly at any one time because he never stops tinkering with his mechanics and his arsenal, and he's reached the doorstep of elite on a few occasions before something throws him off. That something is usually an injury, and he's already pulled a groin this season while running in from the bullpen during the bench-clearing incident in Pittsburgh.
I wouldn't bank on this version of Kelly hanging around for that, but it'd be great if he did, because overachieving relievers often help fringy teams outperform their components. That just requires the rest of the White Sox to provide enough leads, and even less can be assumed there. The solace is that the Sox win even if they lose, because if it looks like they can't make Kelly's dominance matter in September, they should be able to do a lot with it at the deadline in July. The longer Kelly remains untouchable, the more teams will be calling to touch him.
