Atlanta Braves Newcomer: Casey Kelly, From Top Prospect To Second Chance
Feb 21, 2014; Peoria, AZ, USA; San Diego Padres starting pitcher Casey Kelly (49) poses for a photo during photo day at Peoria Sports Complex. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports
Casey Kelly 2016 Outlook
A lot of the commentary on the Christian Bethancourt trade was how Atlanta was shipping off one prospect that hadn’t panned out for another one who’d done the same in Kelly. I really don’t see that in him. I think his surgery and the difficulty he had in returning from it have really put a delay in his development, as did fooling around with pitching for nearly two seasons. So at 25, he’s got a total of 544 1/3 innings on his arm. For comparison’s sake, his former Padre teammate and now Braves teammate Matt Wisler was drafted out of high school three years after Kelly and at 22 has 570 2/3 innings thrown, so Kelly’s arm is not just coming off of injury, but it’s really still a work in progress in learning the art of pitching.
He couldn’t have asked to come to a better organization for his skill set, though. The Braves have taken a number of guys with similar profiles to Kelly and turned them into tremendously successful big league pitchers. As I mentioned in the Monday piece on Aaron Blair, there is quite a mess of pitchers from AA on up in the Braves organization looking for a starting role, and Kelly’s name is now also in that hat.
I do believe the Braves think Kelly can still be a very good starter, and as such, they’ll likely put him where he’ll get regular rotation outings, whether that’s in the Atlanta or Gwinnett rotation. Kelly’s heavy sinker and plus curve ball would be a deadly combination in the bullpen if that ended up being his only big league future, but as Wainwright mentioned in his interview, Kelly’s likely going to be getting his “feel” back for those pitches this year, and he’s shown in previous seasons excellent ability to command, so if he can keep his walk rate around 5% and put those pitches where he wants them, he’ll generate more strikeouts with that curve ball and a ton of grounders with the fastball and change up.