Kelly brings global experience into crucial G6 start

PHILADELPHIA -- The D-backs’ season will rest on the right arm of Merrill Kelly on Monday, when he takes the ball in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series at Citizens Bank Park.

Trailing 3-2 in the best-of-seven series, the D-backs need a win to force a decisive Game 7. It’s a big moment for Kelly, and how the 35-year-old got to this point was hardly a straight line. In fact, it stretched halfway across the globe.

Going to Korea
The Rays selected Kelly in the eighth round of the 2010 MLB Draft. By 2013, he had reached Triple-A Durham, where he had a 3.19 ERA in 15 games (14 starts). A stint in the Arizona Fall League was followed up by a 2.76 ERA in 28 Triple-A games (15 starts) in 2014.

In August of that year, SK Wyverns of the KBO approached Kelly’s agent about having him come to Korea. At the time, the buyout for him to get out of the final two years of Rays control was prohibitive, so the talks were tabled.

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That winter, while he was in the Dominican Republic playing winter ball, Kelly got a call from his agent. The Korean club was still interested and willing to handle the buyout if he would accept a smaller salary in the first year.

Kelly, then 26 years old, waited to see whether the Rays were going to add him to the 40-man roster or whether he would get selected in the Rule 5 Draft if they didn’t. When neither happened, he went ahead and agreed to the deal with SK Wyverns.

“My original plan was to go over there for a year or two just to get out of my [years of control] in Tampa,” Kelly said. “And then come home and even sign a Minor League deal at the time. I didn't care, it was just like I'm going to get out of Tampa because I clearly don't have an avenue to the big leagues there and then see what I got.”

Kelly received a salary of $250,000 and a $100,000 signing bonus. It was more money than he would have made in the Minor Leagues for the Rays and in line with the Major League minimum salary at the time.

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Each year there was a vesting option that Kelly easily hit. And when he was offered a two-year deal for 2017-18 that paid him $1.4 million that final year, he signed it.

Kelly had a big year in ‘17, making 32 starts with a 3.60 ERA, and his agent started receiving calls from interested Major League teams. Kelly asked his KBO team to let him out of the final year of his deal, but the club had no interest in losing its best pitcher.

“I was furious,” Kelly said.

D-backs interested
What Kelly didn’t know at the time is that the D-backs were among the clubs scouting him, and they were impressed by what they saw. They liked Kelly’s fluid delivery and the way he spun the ball. They saw potential in his changeup, which was a work in progress.

Kelly had another outstanding season in Korea, pitching his team to the 2018 title. He knew that the Red Sox and Padres were interested in signing him to a one-year deal.

On Dec. 1, Kelly officially became a free agent. It also happened to be the day he was getting married. It’s also now remembered for being the day the D-backs called and offered him a two-year deal worth $5.5 million with two club options through 2022.

Kelly, who attended high school in Scottsdale, Ariz., didn’t hesitate.

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“It was a no-brainer,” Kelly said. “The fact that I got to tell my wife on arguably the greatest day of my life not only that I get to say yes and marry her, but the fact that I also knew that I was completing something that I worked my whole life for, definitely made that day a lot more special than it already started out to be.”

As it turns out, it was a no-brainer for the D-backs, as well, though they couldn’t have known then how well the signing would work out.

“I thought he was going to be a good starting pitcher,” D-backs GM Mike Hazen said, “like a back-end starting pitcher. Clearly, he’s been incredible for us.”

It didn’t exactly start that way, though. After posting a 3.77 ERA through his first 20 starts in 2019, Kelly endured a six-start stretch in which he surrendered 31 runs (30 earned) over 29 1/3 innings. He hit the nadir in Milwaukee on Aug. 23, when he gave up six runs over 4 1/3 innings against the Brewers.

Meeting in Milwaukee
By that point, Kelly’s season ERA had ballooned to 4.86 ERA, and D-backs manager Torey Lovullo was close to taking him out of the rotation. First, though, Lovullo called Kelly into his office for a meeting that included bullpen coach and former big league reliever Mike Fetters.

“I had a terrible, terrible streak,” Kelly said. “I couldn't figure it out to save my life, and they told me if I was going to do what I'm doing, I'm going to end up in the bullpen. And that's obviously not where I wanted to be.”

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Fetters recalls that the message delivered to Kelly was that he didn’t have to be perfect, that he had good enough stuff without having to be perfect, that the team believed in his abilities.

“I think I put the big leagues on a pedestal a little bit during that time line,” Kelly said. “At that point, that meeting kind of opened my eyes to where it's like, ‘All right, these guys are telling me that I'm better than I am.’

“So that gave me a little bit of a push to kind of get back to, ‘All right, I'm still a good pitcher. They brought me here for a reason.’ I just started letting it fly in and kind of after that, well, we’re sitting here today.”

Kelly is no longer an unknown commodity. He pitched for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic and started multiple playoff games. The D-backs not only picked up both contract options, but they also extended him through 2024 with a two-year deal worth $18 million. It includes a team option for 2025.

“Durable and consistent in a time when our rotation has not been that at all,” Hazen said of Kelly. “It's been exactly what we needed every step of the way. He's been every bit as good as Gallen this year, and the two of them together have carried us.”

The next stop on Kelly’s journey will be a second NLCS start at Citizens Bank Park, where he will look to improve on the four-run, 5 2/3-inning performance he had there in a losing Game 2 effort.

This is always where he believed the road would take him.

“There wasn't a day during my time in Korea,” Kelly said on Saturday, “that I didn't think about being here.”