Archive for Joe Kelly

Alex Cora tabbed Matt Barnes as his highest leverage reliever in the preseason. This did not translate necessarily to usage exclusively like a traditional closer. Barnes faced the heart of the order in the seventh or eighth innings as necessitated trying to preserve wins for Boston. Last night, Barnes received a save chance but left after 17 pitches to some boos from the home crowd. Barnes induced a pop out on a bunt attempt by Delino DeShields but then yielded a single to Danny Santana, a double to Elvis Andrus and a two RBI single to Nomar Mazara blowing the win for Sale and resulting in Barnes fourth blown save of the season. Barnes bounced back to strikeout Hunter Pence and then walked Asdrubal Cabrera intentionally before departing. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday I wrote about Chris Tillman’s success the third time through the lineup this season and how that seemed at odds with his established ability to limit hard contact. It turns out there isn’t much of a relationship between those things, so it’s likely that Tillman is due for some regression when facing batters for a third time in a game going forward. It’s likely because excellent research done by Michael Lichtman shows that a pitcher’s past deviations from the typical decline in performance each time through the lineup is not predictive of future performance. He estimates a pitcher would need about eight full seasons of significantly deviating from the average decline each time through the order before that data would become reliable in a predictive sense.

With that said, let’s look at the starters who have been the best the third time through the lineup this year. Most are regression candidates, but there are a few exceptions. Read the rest of this entry »

They say adversity creates opportunity, whoever “they” are. But there’s likely no group that appreciates that quite as much as fantasy baseball mavens. With Chris Carpenter apparently headed for the disabled list, potentially aeternum, there’s an obvious trickle down effect on the St. Louis Cardinals rotation. The immediate beneficiaries are likely to be some combination of Joe Kelly, Trevor Rosenthal, and/or Shelby Miller.

What we know is the Cardinals still have Adam Wainwright, Jake Westbrook, and Jaime Garcia. What we don’t know is how healthy Garcia is after having his ailing shoulder derail his ability to pitch in the playoffs this past season. But uncertainty about Garcia only further cements Lance Lynn in the rotation. Lynn, as you’ll recall, was bounced from rotation to bullpen after he started to get shelled in August. It wasn’t entirely clear if they wanted to use Lynn as a potent setup man for Jason Motte or if they planned for him to start games. With Carpenter down, they probably get their answer whether they wanted it or not.

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