Prior to Friday’s 6-3 win over the Braves, the Rays placed right-hander Kevin Kelly on the 15-day injured list (retroactive to April 10) with a left gluteal strain. Righty Cole Sulser was called up from Triple-A in the corresponding roster move.
Rays manager Kevin Cash told the Tampa Bay Times’ Rick Stroud and other reporters that Kelly woke up feeling sore on Thursday, following the reliever’s scoreless inning of work against the Angels the previous night. There was some initial uncertainty over whether Kelly might’ve been dealing with a nerve issue or not, but Cash said “it’s an actual glute strain. So, pretty unique in that fact. We’ll see if it shrunk down in a couple days and get a ball back in his hands and see where he’s at.”
As Cash noted, a timeline isn’t yet in place for when Kelly might return, but the Rays will be without one of their more underrated relievers for at least the next two weeks. The Rockies selected Kelly out of the Guardians’ organization in the 2022 Rule 5 Draft, and after Tampa acquired Kelly in a trade that same draft day, the right-hander has become the latest in a long line of pitchers to blossom with the Rays.
Kelly posted a 2.88 ERA, 21.5% strikeout rate, and a superb 4.3% walk rate over 137 2/3 relief innings for Tampa Bay in 2023-24. That walk rate ranks among the best in the game over the last two seasons, and Kelly augmented that excellent control with very good soft-contact numbers. His grounder rate also jumped from a very good 47.7% in 2023 to an elite 56.8% mark in 2024. Kelly isn’t a hard thrower, but he rarely uses a traditional four-seamer, as he relies heavily on a devastating slider and an above-average sweeper to retire batters.
If that production wasn’t enough, Kelly is also a workhorse, often working multiple innings. He has yet to go beyond one inning of work in any of his five outings this season, and his numbers are a bit more on the modest side in the small sample size of those five innings — a 3.60 ERA and an equal number of walks and strikeouts (two apiece). All of the damage came on a two-run homer Kelly allowed to the Rockies’ Mickey Moniak on March 30, which marked only the tenth home run Kelly has surrendered in his MLB career.
In the short term, Cash said the Rays view Sulser as a candidate to take over from Kelly in that multi-inning capacity. Tampa acquired Sulser from the Mets in a cash transaction last July, and Sulser tossed 11 2/3 scoreless innings for the Rays over the rest of the season. Sulser had an excellent season out of the Orioles’ bullpen in 2021, but has since posted a 4.69 ERA over 55 2/3 innings with four different Major League teams.