‘He’s ready’: How Carson Kelly’s breakout led the Diamondbacks away from a three-catcher system (2024)

DENVER – Carson Kelly has a memento from his first trip to Coors Field as a Diamondback.

The last time he was here, at the beginning of May, he’d clubbed his first big-league homer. It had been caught by a man named Doug, who graciously returned the ball to Kelly in exchange for some autographed gear. “Shout-out to Doug,” Kelly had said after the game.

On Wednesday, in the midst of Arizona’s second trip of the month to Colorado, Kelly and Doug finally met face-to-face. Once again, Doug had another gift for Kelly – a picture, spliced together from photos of each holding the ball from his first homer, with Doug’s autograph. Then Kelly went out that evening and hit another home run.

That homer was his fifth of the season, all of them coming in the month of May. The good times that began with his first trip to Coors Field have continued through the second. The 24-year-old began the month hitting just .196 with a .560 OPS. After going 3-for-4 in a 5-4 loss to the Rockies on Wednesday, he is batting .263 with an .851 mark.

That breakout has a lot to do with why Kelly is now one of two catchers on the roster instead of one of three. The Diamondbacks have carried three catchers every season that general manager Mike Hazen has constructed the roster, but they cut down to two this past weekend when they designated superb-defender-but-struggling-hitter John Ryan Murphy for assignment. (As of Wednesday, Murphy remained in DFA limbo.)

The Diamondbacks acquired Kelly as part of the Paul Goldschmidt trade with the idea he could be their catcher of the future. Now, after seeing him make strides both at the plate and behind it, they are entrusting him with more responsibility. “He’s done a really nice job of showing us he’s ready to take the next, necessary steps to play a little more,” manager Torey Lovullo said.

Here’s how he got better.

The difference between Kelly’s offensive performance in April and in May is eye-poppingly stark. Entering Wednesday, he’d batted .300/.440/.625 this month. In March and April, he’d struck out nearly 13 times more often than he walked and yanked the ball to the pull side nearly 58 percent of the time. Since, he’d earned two walks for every strikeout and more than halved his pull rate.

That homer to Doug seems to have been a big factor.

“The first month, I was still trying to get my bearings under me a little bit,” Kelly said. “It was right when we came here for the first time, when I hit that homer, that was a huge confidence boost for me, kind of a little monkey off my back. From there on, it was just, ‘Play my game.’”

With fewer than 60 plate appearances each month thanks to his timeshare with two other catchers, small sample sizes could theoretically skew both of those performances. But there are plenty of factors that undergird his breakout’s believability. For one, his batting average on balls in play has remained stable. Second, he is swinging and missing less often, cutting his whiff rate from 12.6 percent the first month of the season to 7.4 percent in the second.

In general, Kelly has done a better job of swinging at the right pitches. Before May 1, opposing pitchers focused purely on pitching Kelly down and away. He obliged them too often with a swing. Pitchers have still hammered that corner of the zone this month – although they’ve also given Kelly more pitches over the plate – but Kelly has stopped biting.

To Kelly, that’s a byproduct of better mechanics. He worked this offseason on keeping his head from floating during his swing, which perceptually speeds up incoming pitches and makes identifying them more difficult. This month, he’s done a better job of keeping his head steady and staying on his back leg. That’s also helped him drive the ball.

“If he stays stacked on his backside and gets his front foot down without drifting forward, he’s in a position to do damage,” assistant hitting coach Eric Hinske said. “If he drifts, he’s in trouble. There’s a pull-side groundball. He knows it and he feels it.”

That might help explain another significant area of improvement for Kelly this month – his performance against four-seam fastballs. The first month of the season, Kelly went hitless against four-seamers (and struggled against just about everything else). In May – entering Wednesday – he’s hit .455 against heaters and slugged 1.000 against them.

Despite the fact that he’s clobbering them, opposing pitchers – both lefties and righties – have somewhat oddly thrown him far more four-seamers in May than they did before. (His homer Wednesday came on a four-seamer that was immediately preceded by three others.) Kelly thinks that’s because he’s getting into better counts, which might be a partial explanation. He’s been ahead in the count on 27.3 percent of his pitches in May compared to 23.8 percent before, and has faced a two-strike count on 34.7 percent of pitches this month compared to 39.8 percent prior.

But that doesn’t explain why he’s also seeing more fastballs when the pitcher is ahead, including with two strikes. That’s not a mystery Kelly is likely to puzzle over. There are areas in which he could improve – specifically against right-handers, although he’s getting on base against them at a better rate this month – but Kelly’s mostly focused on trying to hold on to this groove he’s found.

“During the long course of a season, you go through ups and downs,” he said. “How short can we make those downs is the name of the game.”

That Kelly is hitting was a big factor in moving away from Murphy, who wasn’t. But Murphy was also a terrific defensive player on a team that values catcher defense as much or more than any club in baseball. The Diamondbacks wouldn’t have placed more on Kelly’s plate unless they were sure he could handle the defensive responsibilities.

It was partly by design that Kelly started the season on a lighter diet. The Diamondbacks inundate their catchers with information before starts – three full sheets of paper, crammed with so much color-coded info there is little white space. It’s enough that a veteran catcher such as Alex Avila still refers to it in the dugout between innings to refresh his memory. For Kelly, “it was a lot more than he was used to,” catching coach Robby Hammock said.

The Diamondbacks felt that Kelly could probably get himself up to speed if needed, but they also had the luxury of having three catchers they liked. That led them to ease Kelly in so that he didn’t fall into a hole trying to summit his steep learning curve.

“We didn’t want to overwhelm him early,” Hammock said. “But at the same time, he could be able to handle it, we thought. We had the luxury of three catchers anyway, and we really liked them. It was kind of a no-brainer.”

Kelly has proved himself up to the task. He ranks 16th in Baseball Prospectus’ Fielding Runs Above Average metric for catchers, despite having shared playing time with two others at his position. He’s been just barely below average as a framer, although he’s excelled in that metric in past years. He has been a strong blocker on balls in the dirt and has been a net-positive with his throwing.

Scouts have seen those tools on display for years while Kelly was in the minors, but Hammock is pleased that they have held up while Kelly has attempted to digest the oodles of information the Diamondbacks feed their catchers. “All this stuff isn’t clouding any of that,” Hammock said. But what’s been most impressive, the coach said, is how far along Kelly has come with his game-calling.

The Diamondbacks have detailed game plans for each hitter, and it can be tempting for young catchers to religiously stick to the script. “All you want to do, especially for young guys, is follow the rules, so to speak,” Hammock said. But sometimes you have to use the real-time data you get from your eyes and call an audible.

More recently, Hammock has seen Kelly trust his instincts. That doesn’t always mean calling an unconventional pitch in a crucial situation. It more often means calling that unconventional pitch in a lower-leverage spot so you can lean on the game plan when it really matters.

“There’s parts in the game early that we go away from the game plan and throw something that might be a little more risky,” Hammock said. “Because of our lead at the time and outs and people on the bases, we do something a little different to be able to save that trump card for later. To be able to not show our hand right away. He’s done that a few times, which has been good to see.”

Scouts have predicted this type of performance from Kelly for some time. He’s long been considered big-league ready behind the plate, and many have thought he’d hit given the opportunity. The last three years in St. Louis, where a likely Hall-of-Famer in Yadier Molina dons the catcher’s gear, there was none. But now that there is, Kelly isn’t letting himself think about his breakout as, well, a breakout.

“I’m so focused on the day-to-day operations that all that other stuff really doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “I’m focused on helping this team win and being the best version of myself.”

If that means he gets more playing time, that’s fine by him. But he wasn’t complaining before. The two catchers he shared time with were collaborative and helped him grow. He wasn’t agitating for a bigger role.

But now that he has one, he feels ready for it.

“Whenever my name’s called upon, I’m going to go out there and give my best,” Kelly said. “I believe in myself as a good player. I’m still young and continuing to learn, but I’m confident when I’m in there.”

(Top photo: David Zalubowski / Associated Press)