Atlanta Braves Newcomer: Casey Kelly, From Top Prospect To Second Chance

Mar 2, 2015; Peoria, AZ, USA; San Diego Padres starting pitcher Casey Kelly (49) poses during photo day at Peoria Sports Complex. Mandatory Credit: Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports

Casey Kelly Scouting Report

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Kelly’s season was rough, so picking starts to really get a good look at him deep into a game was difficult. I ended up finding a handful of starts where he completed at least 5 innings, one in AAA and three in AA. Over those four games, he recorded 22 innings pitched, a 2.05 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and 8/21 BB/K ratio.

Kelly works with a three-pitch mix primarily, utilizing a sinker, curve, and change up. His sinker sits in the low-90s from 91-93, touching 95 while the curve has very good 12/6 movement. His curve ball is definitely his strikeout pitch, but he gets good late movement out of both his sinker and change up that allows him to get weak contact and plenty of ground balls.

Kelly remains tall throughout his motion, making him appear taller than his 6’3 frame, but he does generate good power through his upper legs. His release point is between 3/4 and pure overhand and adds some deception to the batter as Kelly staying tall and throwing from up high gives the ball a definite downward, heavy plane.

His motion remains fairly consistent, but he struggled in one start in particular to find his location. In that particular start, in spite of only allowing 1 earned run, he walked 5 batters. Adam Wainwright gave a tremendous interview to Stephania Bell of ESPN a couple of years ago where he talked about recovery from Tommy John surgery. He discussed how he had talked with pitchers throughout the league and heard from many the same thing he experienced – the snap, movement, and velocity on pitches come back first, but it takes a complete full season of pitching before true “feel” for commanding those pitches comes back. Kelly had the look of a guy in his outings who really didn’t know where his stuff was always headed, even though it really was high-quality stuff.

Next: 2016 outlook

The starts I had watched were so good compared to his season numbers that I felt the need to see what I was missing, so I opened up and watched his August 19th start where he was unmercifully left out to dry over 2 2/3 innings, allowing 10 runs on 13 hits in that appearance. In watching that start, two things were immediately clear – first, that Kelly was absolutely “aiming” that day rather than pitching, and second, that in that aiming, he created an incredible “tell” on his change up, which got completely obliterated in the start, by dipping his arm angle to just below 3/4 when throwing the change up while keeping his usual arm slot for the fastball. That one start raised Kelly’s entire minor league season ERA by 0.75 and his WHIP by nearly 0.10.