Triple-A Louisville manager Pat Kelly sometimes enjoys having a bit of fun when telling his players they’re moving up to the majors.
On Friday night, Kelly did just that when he approached his son Casey on the field after a postgame fireworks show and asked him what he was doing the next day.
Casey Kelly, a pitcher and former first-round pick who had spent six years in the Korean Baseball Organization before the Cincinnati Reds signed him to a minor league deal this month, replied: “I’m starting for you tomorrow.”
But he wasn’t. Instead, he was heading back to the major leagues. When Pat Kelly delivered the news to Casey, surrounded by their family, there was no joke or laughter—just a heartfelt moment between father and son, who hadn’t expected this after Casey’s long stint in the KBO.
“We kind of just stared at each other for a good couple of seconds,” Casey Kelly said. “And then he started to cry and I started to cry.”
The tears soon stopped as there was too much to do.
By Saturday morning, Casey Kelly was in Pittsburgh. By that night, he was on a major league mound for the first time in 2,159 days. By the end of the ninth inning, the 34-year-old Kelly was celebrating his first career save after pitching three perfect innings in a 10-2 win.
“This has just all been a whirlwind of a month,” Kelly said. “Just trying to soak it all in.”
There’s a lot to think about. Kelly was drafted 30th overall by the Boston Red Sox in 2008 when he was 18 years old. He made it to the majors with San Diego in 2012 and played for the Padres, Atlanta, and San Francisco, with a 2-11 record and a 5.46 ERA in 26 games.
Kelly went to the LG Twins of the KBO in 2019, where he finally found success, developing a changeup and slider he could rely on and learning how to handle a lineup through multiple innings.
Results soon followed. Kelly went 73-48 with a 3.31 ERA in six seasons with the Twins. Even though he wondered if his skills were still good enough for major league hitters, he admits that the idea of returning to the majors seemed more distant as he moved from his late 20s into his mid-30s.
Things changed in late July when LG released him, with his ERA at 4.51. The Reds, needing help due to injuries to their pitching staff, decided to sign Kelly to a minor league deal.
Kelly joined Louisville to play for his dad, with no other expectations than to show the Reds’ front office that his 35-year-old arm still had something to offer and maybe prove something to himself as well.
“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 in for rookie Julian Aguiar with a six-run lead. He retired all nine Pirates he faced, including two by strikeout. He threw 25 of his 38 pitches for strikes, using his location and off-speed pitches to keep the Pirates guessing on a night when his fastball reached 92 mph.
His performance gave Cincinnati’s tired bullpen a much-needed break and might have lifted a team struggling during the second half of the season, affecting their playoff hopes.
“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 hopefully in the future, Kelly feels that after 16 years since being drafted and more than five years away, everything is back in play.
“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.”
