PITTSBURGH (AP) — Triple-A Louisville manager Pat Kelly occasionally likes to have a little fun when he gets to tell one of his players they're heading to the majors.
And Kelly tried his best on short notice on Friday night when he approached his son Casey on the field following a postgame fireworks display and asked him what he was doing on Saturday.
The younger Kelly — a pitcher and former first-round pick who spent six years in the Korean Baseball Organization before the Cincinnati Reds signed him to a minor league deal this month — told his father: “I’m starting for you tomorrow.”
Only he wasn't. He was going back to the big leagues, and when the elder Kelly passed along the news surrounded by their family, there was no punchline. No hearty laugh. Just a moment between father and son that neither saw coming during Casey's long detour in the KBO.
“We kind of just stared at each other for a good couple seconds,” Casey Kelly said. “And then he started to cry and I started to cry.”
The tears quickly dried. There was too much to do.
By Saturday morning, Casey Kelly was in Pittsburgh. By Saturday night, he was on a major league mound for the first time in 2,159 days. And by the end of the ninth, the 34-year-old Kelly was celebrating the first save of his career after pitching three perfect innings in a 10-2 victory.
“This has just all been a whirlwind of a month,” Kelly said. “Just trying to soak it all in.”
There's plenty to think about. Kelly was taken 30th overall in the 2008 draft by the Boston Red Sox. He was 18 at the time. He eventually reached the majors in 2012 with San Diego and bounced from the Padres to Atlanta and San Francisco, going 2-11 with a 5.46 ERA in 26 appearances.
Kelly left for the LG Twins of the KBO in 2019, where all the pieces he struggled to put together in the majors finally started to fit. The teenager who relied heavily on his fastball and curveball developed a changeup and slider he could trust. He figured out how to navigate his way through a lineup three or four times.
Results soon followed. Kelly went 73-48 with a 3.31 ERA in six seasons with the Twins and while he wondered if his stuff was still good enough to get major league hitters out, he admits the prospect seemed to be getting further and further away as his late 20s turned into his mid-30s.
Things changed in late July when LG released him with Kelly's ERA languishing at 4.51. The Reds, their injury-ravaged pitching staff in need of help, took a flyer on Kelly and signed him to a minor league deal.
Kelly arrived in Louisville to play for his dad with no expectations other than to show Cincinnati's front office his soon-to-be 35-year-old right arm still had some life left in it and maybe prove something to himself in the process.
“You know, there’s a little bit of doubt in your mind of ’Can I still do it over here?'” Kelly said.
Against the Pirates, he could. Kelly came on for highly touted rookie Julian Aguiar with a six-run lead. He retired all nine Pirates he faced, including two on strikeouts. He threw 25 of his 38 pitches for strikes, relying on location and off-speed stuff to keep the Pirates off balance on a night when his fastball topped out at 92 mph.
It was enough to give the rest of Cincinnati's overworked bullpen a welcome night off, and maybe provide a shot of adrenaline to a clubhouse in need of a lift during a second-half swoon that has pushed the Reds off the pace in the chase for a playoff spot.
“Casey did his part for sure,” Cincinnati manager David Bell said. “The good vibes, the positive response, that's just who our team is. Casey fits right in.”
For now and Kelly hopes, maybe down the road too. A full 16 years after he was drafted and more than half-a-decade after he headed overseas in search of a reset, everything is suddenly back on the table.
“I really feel like pitching-wise, it’s the best I’ve been, being able to throw everything where I want to,” he said. “And, obviously you have those days where they’re not. But, you know, I’m confident in my skills now as a pitcher. Again, this league is so hard. It's the best of the best. So we'll just see what happens.”
