Merrill Kelly's control struggles continue as Diamondbacks blow lead in loss to Reds

With no balls and two strikes to Tommy Pham, Merrill Kelly unleashed a change-up, buried it a few inches below the zone and got Pham to bite for a strikeout.

In the context of Monday night’s series-opening, 5-4, loss to the Reds, the at-bat was insignificant. It served, though, to showcase what Kelly can do when he gets ahead of batters. That is, when he does the complete opposite of what he did to the three batters before Pham.

With one out in the fifth inning, Kelly fell behind 2-0 to Chris Okey and served up the catcher’s first career hit. Then, he walked Nick Senzel (walk rate: 5.2%) on four pitches. With those two on first and second, he pulled a first-pitch cutter to Brandon Drury, Cincinnati’s best hitter. That forced Kelly to try to get a 1-0 change-up over for a strike.

The pitch was down on the black, just like Kelly wanted. But it wasn’t buried, like the pitch to Pham, because at 1-0 with two men on, it couldn’t be. Drury responded by sending a three-run home run into the left field seats, erasing a 4-1 Diamondbacks’ lead with one swing.

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“We were in a good spot, we just made some mistakes,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “That three-run home run really made the difference in this game today.”

For Kelly, the inning was a frustrating continuation of an unwelcome trend. Since the start of May, he’s walked at least two batters in every game. Over that stretch, he’s issuing 4.6 walks per nine innings — nearly twice his career rate of 2.7.

“Towards those middle innings, kinda fell back into that same train that I was last month,” Kelly said. “Just getting behind people and having to kinda navigate and survive rather than attacking.”

Last week, Kelly said he felt “pretty close” to figuring out his control issues. He then followed that up by going six scoreless in Cincinnati. Beneath the surface, though, he walked three, foreshadowing Monday’s struggles.

In the sixth inning, he again gave up a key hit from behind in the count — an RBI single to Mike Moustakas on a 2-0 pitch. With that, the Reds fully reversed the Diamondbacks’ early lead, which was built on the back of a towering two-run third inning home run from Christian Walker and a fourth inning rally that also scored two.

Even after losing the lead, the Diamondbacks had a handful of chances to score but, through a combination of bad luck and bad hitting, couldn’t do so.

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With runners on the corners and two outs in the fifth, Jake McCarthy lined a pitch 107.4 mph to right but directly at Albert Almora for an inning-ending out. With two out and a man on first in the seventh, Daulton Varsho hit one 99.7 mph directly at center-fielder Nick Senzel. And, leading off the ninth, David Peralta found Almora’s glove at 102.6 mph. All three of those balls had a hit probability over 50%, based on their exit velocity and launch angle, according to Baseball Savant.

“Those are frustrating moments for all of us,” Lovullo said. “But at the end of the day, when we are following the process and having a good result, I'm pleased.”

Arizona’s biggest chance was in the eighth inning, sandwiched between those hard outs.

Alek Thomas legged out a two-out infield single and moved to third on a stolen base and throwing error, producing a golden opportunity for Geraldo Perdomo. Perdomo worked the count full before swinging through a slider, stranding Thomas on third. Afterward, Lovullo called it a “solid at-bat,” adding that Perdomo “just got beat.” The 3-2 pitch, though, was a hanging, middle-middle slider — a batter’s dream squandered.

“We're all riding through a lot of frustration right now because I feel like we had this game,” Lovullo said. “This should have been a game that we won.”

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Theo Mackie covers Arizona high school sports, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Phoenix Rising FC. He can be reached by email at theo.mackie@gannett.com and on Twitter @theo_mackie.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks, Merrill Kelly can't hold lead in loss to Reds