Machine Gun Kelly, notorious gangster. I'm hoping this sticks as a nickname for the current Mr. Kelly.
It's likely Garcia's return would come in a starting capacity, which would probably mean the end of Kelly's tenure in the rotation. If so, he ended on a high note, throwing 6.1 very effective innings last night as the Cardinals continued their 2012 hammering of the Arizona Diamondbacks. (The Cards are now 4-0 against the Snakes this season, and have outscored Arizona by a combined score of 30-11.) He gave up a pair of runs on a seventh-inning homer that essentially chased him from the game, but that was really the only significant blemish on his evening.
Even better than the runs was the 6:2 strikeout to walk ratio for Kelly, who hasn't always been nearly so effective in his time with the big club. He may or may not have been pitching to stay in St. Louis -- for the record, he probably wasn't; that decision is going to be more about Jaime's health than what Joe Kelly did on the mound -- but either way, he certainly pitched like a man who wanted to stay right where he is.
- 12 games, all starts.
- 68.2 innings.
- An average of 5.72 innings per start. (Not too bad, considering his penchant for elevated pitch counts, but not quite as good as you would hope.)
- A 3.41 ERA.
- A 4.01 FIP.
- A 4.06 xFIP. (That's FIP with a normalized home run rate, for those of you keeping score at home.)
- A strikeout rate of 5.90 per 9 innings.
- A walk rate of 3.01 per 9 innings.
- 75 hits allowed, 6 of which left the ballpark.
- A 51.2% groundball rate. (Very nice.)
- A WHIP of 1.427. (Not so nice.)
- And finally, for those of you who care about such things, three wins and five losses.
