Baseball Prospectus

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Preseason Long-Term Forecast (Beyond the 2019 Projections)

Comparable Players (Similarity Index 75)

Rank	Score	Name	Year	Run Average	Trend
1	91	Ryan Dempster	2008	3.27
2	83	Tyson Ross	2018	4.39
3	81	Whitey Ford	1960	3.50
4	81	David Phelps	2018	0.00	DNP
5	81	Alexi Ogando	2015	3.99
6	80	Bob Veale	1967	4.13
7	80	C.J. Wilson	2012	4.54
8	80	Clay Buchholz	2016	5.17
9	80	Orel Hershiser	1990	4.26
10	79	Tanner Roark	2018	4.49
11	79	Doug Davis	2007	4.67
12	78	Bob Gibson	1967	3.18
13	78	Tim Hudson	2007	3.49
14	78	Dan Jennings	2018	3.78
15	78	Jose Mesa	1997	3.06
16	78	Phil Niekro	1970	4.86
17	78	Carlos Zambrano	2012	5.10
18	77	Dennys Reyes	2008	2.33
19	77	A.J. Burnett	2008	4.43
20	77	Justin Masterson	2016	0.00	DNP
21	77	Gio Gonzalez	2017	3.09
22	77	Tom Wilhelmsen	2015	3.48
23	77	Terry Adams	2004	5.27
24	77	Bob Lemon	1952	2.99
25	77	Kevin Gregg	2009	4.98
26	76	Jake Westbrook	2009	0.00	DNP
27	76	Tom Gordon	1999	5.60
28	76	Kris Medlen	2017	0.00	DNP
29	76	Yovani Gallardo	2017	5.79
30	76	Larry Jackson	1962	4.32	DNP
31	75	Bill Hands	1971	4.16
32	75	Felix Hernandez	2017	4.78
33	75	Jeremy Affeldt	2010	4.50
34	75	Bob Rush	1957	4.85
35	75	Lance Lynn	2018	5.00
36	75	Dan Kolb	2006	5.21
37	75	Kevin Brown	1996	2.32
38	75	Jim Brosnan	1961	3.83
39	74	Kelvim Escobar	2007	3.63
40	74	Scott Feldman	2014	4.19
41	74	Burke Badenhop	2014	2.55
42	74	Derek Lowe	2004	6.75
43	74	Andrew Cashner	2018	5.71
44	74	Steve Rogers	1981	3.59
45	74	Bob Ojeda	1989	3.89
46	74	Guy Morton	1924	8.76
47	74	Doug Fister	2015	4.89
48	74	Bryan Morris	2018	0.00	DNP
49	73	Matt Wise	2007	5.03
50	73	George Pipgras	1931	4.90
51	73	Jeff Fassero	1994	3.50
52	73	Sam LeCure	2015	4.05
53	73	Lee Meadows	1926	5.04
54	73	Matt Clement	2006	6.89
55	73	Jack Morris	1986	3.54
56	73	Clem Labine	1958	4.76
57	73	Kevin Jepsen	2016	6.34
58	72	John Denny	1984	3.09
59	72	Jared Hughes	2017	3.32
60	72	Ramon Ramirez	2013	12.71
61	72	Sean Burnett	2014	13.50
62	72	Ronald Belisario	2014	6.51
63	72	Doug Drabek	1994	3.17
64	72	Anibal Sanchez	2015	5.10
65	72	John Grabow	2010	8.42
66	72	John Lackey	2010	4.77
67	72	Pedro Feliciano	2008	4.05
68	72	Warren Spahn	1952	3.26
69	72	Kevin Millwood	2006	4.77
70	72	Dean Chance	1972	0.00	DNP
71	72	Jared Burton	2012	3.05
72	72	Mike Garcia	1955	4.27
73	72	John Franco	1992	1.64
74	72	Rick Reuschel	1980	3.85
75	72	Tom Glavine	1997	3.23
76	71	Johnny Cueto	2017	4.70
77	71	John Parrish	2009	0.00	DNP
78	71	Roberto Hernandez	2012	9.42
79	71	Juan Rincon	2010	4.50
80	71	Cesar Ramos	2015	2.92
81	71	Matt Guerrier	2010	3.55
82	71	Matt Albers	2014	0.90
83	71	Phil Coke	2014	4.66
84	71	Wilbur Wood	1973	4.16
85	71	Sheriff Blake	1931	6.40
86	71	Josh Collmenter	2017	10.06
87	71	Fernando Rodney	2008	4.91
88	71	Eric O'Flaherty	2016	7.85
89	71	Mike Caldwell	1980	4.47
90	71	Chad Bradford	2006	3.34
91	71	Hyun-jin Ryu	2018	2.51
92	71	Chris Rusin	2018	6.91
93	71	Dave Goltz	1980	4.78
94	71	Luis Garcia	2018	6.07
95	71	Blaine Hardy	2018	3.87
96	71	Andy Messersmith	1977	4.75
97	71	Dizzy Trout	1946	2.70
98	71	Scot Shields	2007	4.32
99	71	Tony Watson	2016	3.33
100	71	Cliff Lee	2010	3.56

BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2019		Due to publishing agreements, the 2019 player comments and team essays are only available in the Baseball Prospectus 2019 book (available in hardcopy, and soon e-book and Kindle).
2018		If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times: Joe Kelly Has Great Luck. Wait, what? Despite the offensive outbreak around him, Kelly posted the lowest homer rate, second-lowest BABIP and third-best strand rate of his career in 2017. That would seem to make him a prime regression candidate, but hold your horses, because Kelly isn’t just fortunate, he also had Great Stuff™. Kelly’s average fastball velocity in 2017 was a ridiculous 99.3 mph, good for the fastest mark among qualified relievers not named Aroldis Chapman. Despite that uptick in velo, Kelly didn’t look like he was overthrowing the ball as much as in years past. His strikeout rate fell a bit, but so too did his walk rate, and that tradeoff seemed to work for him (though DRA is not impressed). Kelly missed some time with a hamstring strain in July, but he was a big part of why the Red Sox’s bullpen finished a surprising second in the American League in ERA.
2017		We’ve always known that Joe Kelly has Great Stuff™. Now he’s finally putting it to good use. After yet another disastrous stint as a starter, the Red Sox finally, mercifully moved Kelly to the bullpen in July. He responded by allowing just two earned runs in 17.2 innings, striking out 21 while walking just five. Kelly’s fastball routinely touched the upper-90s in relief, and hitters had a bear of a time trying to pull the ball against him. Couple Kelly’s hotter heat with his improved command out of the pen, and he certainly looks the part of a high-leverage, late-inning reliever. He's unlikely to get many Cy Young votes in such a role, it’s true, but perhaps no less likely than if he’d remained a starter.
2016		“Joe Kelly has great stuff” is a joke, you see. Not because it isn't true, but because to praise the quality of Kelly's offerings without citing his other attributes misses the big picture in the same manner as asking how Mrs. Lincoln enjoyed the play. Pitch movement and velocity are mighty trees, but command, control and sequencing make up much of the starting-pitcher forest, and only minding the former can make you miss the latter entirely. After predicting he'd win the Cy Young in spring training, Kelly pitched poorly enough to be demoted to Pawtucket in June. Most thought he'd move to the bullpen, but he was recalled as a starter in July, pitched horribly three times... and then inexplicably embarked on the best eight-game run of his career. Kelly went 7-0 with a 2.35 ERA from August 7th to September 15th before sitting out the rest of the season with shoulder soreness. That's why this is funny. Joe Kelly really does have great stuff. You just never know if he'll be able to use it.
2015		If we're going on pure stuff and not taking into account all of the other things that make a good pitcher good, Kelly should be better than he is. His power sinker features a ton of movement, his changeup, slider and curveball all have life and he generates plenty of groundballs. But Kelly struggles with command, and that has a starkly limiting effect on the overall effectiveness of his repertoire. It's not just the walks that hurt Kelly; it's his inability to place strikes where he wants them, and his inability to entice batters to swing at pitches just outside of the strike zone, and his inability to pitch from ahead in the count. Kelly has the ingredients needed to serve as a mid-rotation pitcher, but he's going to be more of a back-end option unless he gets better at working in and on the periphery of the strike zone, which is the premise of a lot more rejected screenplays than pictures in production.
2014		Box-score scouting will lead you astray in your analysis of Kelly�it's easy to conclude from his stat line that he�s a soft-tossing groundballer capable of eating innings but unable to dominate a lineup with raw stuff. Yet the bespectacled righty sits around 95 to 97 mph with his sinker and has devastating movement on all of his offerings. So what�s with the meager strikeout rates? Commanding the aforementioned movement has been part of the problem (which explains his elevated walk rate as well). Kelly also doesn�t earn enough whiffs with his heater. He used his fastball in 53 percent of two-strike counts, but netted a strikeout just 33 percent of time. This was below the league average, with the highest rates in the league checking in over 50 percent. Kelly isn't a finished product, but the foundation laid thus far is encouraging. He is already the best Joe Kelly to ever play the game (by bWAR), though he's got a long way to go to catch Hall of Famer Joe Kelley.
2013		Kelly is not considered a top prospect, but injuries forced him into the Cardinals rotation in June and he held down the fort admirably until Garcia returned. His mid-90s sinker can be a genuine worm-killer, but Kelly doesn�t miss a lot of bats, his command can be shakier than a dashboard hula dancer, and his off-speed stuff is unremarkable. Given his height and the fact that lefties lit him up last year�only the dessicated remains of Jason Marquis worked 100 innings and allowed a higher TAv than Kelly�s .333�it seems likely Kelly�s future is in relief, with an occasional spot start.
2012		With a slight frame and an electric fastball that reaches the upper 90s, Joe Kelly fits the closer profile. But the Cardinals have him starting in the minors to work on his secondary pitches. He still lacks command but showed enough to earn a promotion to Double-A in July. Kelly generates impressive ground-ball rates and could move fast if he can harness his stuff.
2011		Hard-throwing righty Joe Kelly made a successful conversion to the rotation; he pitched better than his results, but needs to work on his secondary pitches or he�ll wind up back in the bullpen.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Joe Kelly has thrown 14,812 pitches that have been tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2012 and 2024, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2024, he has relied primarily on his Sinker (98mph) and Slider (91mph), also mixing in a Fourseam Fastball (98mph) and Curve (89mph). He also rarely throws a Change (89mph).