The world knows DBacks' Merrill Kelly now after dominant Game 2 performance

ARLINGTON, Texas — Merrill Kelly walked out of the Diamondbacks’ dugout, wearing a black World Series hoodie over his gray uniform pants. For six months, this is the point when his day would be done. When he could drive home, or ride to the team hotel, and think about the performance he had just delivered.

But this is the World Series. So Kelly was whisked into an on-field interview, where he told Fox Sports that his outing was “probably one of the better ones.” He had a spot on an MLB Network roundtable, on which he said, “I definitely was feeling myself walking off the mound.” The next assignment was the interview room, where assembled reporters asked about his journey from South Korea to the major leagues. Even as he walked back to the visiting clubhouse, he was tailed by a few lingering reporters. Everybody wanted to learn a little bit about Merrill Kelly.

All of it felt like the national reckoning with a truth the Diamondbacks learned a long time ago. Kelly is not just part of a formidable 1-2 punch with Zac Gallen, he’s one of better pitchers in baseball. And he’s capable of performances like Saturday night, when he delivered this organization its first win in a World Series since Luis Gonzalez walked off Mariano Rivera 8,028 days ago.

Kelly’s outing reads like a dream. He struck out nine batters and walked none in seven innings of one-run ball. He became just the 10th pitcher in World Series history to strike out at least nine and walk none. Led by his dominance, the Diamondbacks rolled to a 9-1 victory over the Rangers in Game 2, earning a split on the road and heading back to Chase Field with the upper hand.

“We won this game today,” manager Torey Lovullo said, “because of Merrill.”

Really, there was nothing unusual about Kelly’s outing. It was just Kelly being Kelly. He used all six of his pitches and got whiffs on five of them. His versatility makes him a game-planning nightmare and in-game adjustments aren’t much easier.

“A lot of his pitches look really similar,” said the Rangers' Nathaniel Lowe, who was so fooled that he stared down a cutter over the plate for a called third strike in the third inning before flying out in the fifth.

For comparison’s sake, here’s Brenton Doyle, an anonymous Rockies’ outfielder, after being shut down by Kelly two months ago: “His pitches, they look the same until the very last second.”

See? Same Kelly, bigger stage.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that none of it overwhelmed Kelly. Prior to Game 1, he acknowledged the shock factor of pitching in the World Series. Throughout his press conference Friday, he repeatedly turned around, looking at the World Series logo on a screen behind him. “Just to double-check,” he joked after one such occasion. He acknowledged “once I get out there, it’s probably going to be very apparent to me that it’s not” a normal game.

But he also spoke with self-assurance. He re-iterated the importance of treating his pregame routine the same and of maintaining his same mental approach. Prior to the game, he did not emerge with his teammates while they took batting practice in front of cameras and broadcasters from dozens of countries. He stayed in the clubhouse, preparing as if it were April.

Then he dominated as if it were April. Fittingly, his shining moment came at the end, when he struck out five of the six batters that he got to face for a third time.

Marcus Semien struck out looking on a four-seam fastball, which he had only seen on two of 13 pitches to that point. Corey Seager, the Rangers’ best hitter, went down chasing a cutter, which Kelly unveiled for the first time in nine pitches to him. Evan Carter had no hope on a curveball, just the second in 10 pitches he saw from Kelly.

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The trend continued in the seventh. Adolis García, Friday’s walk-off hero, could only watch a four-seamer on the corner of the strike zone. Jonah Heim, whom Kelly had attacked over the outer part of the plate all game, stared at the last pitch Kelly threw, a sinker that broke back over the inside edge.

“My mentality is, the more things that those guys have to think about throughout the game, the better for me,” Kelly told MLB Network. “They can’t cover both sides of the plate, they can’t cover all speeds.”

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If there was anything elevated about Kelly’s performance, it was his control. Only four times in 24 at-bats did he so much as fall into a 2-1 hole.

“When Merrill established being in the zone early in the count, I think that really opened things up for him,” pitching strategist Dan Haren said. “He was going right at guys. … He just didn’t let them up for breath.”

Even as Kelly put together the best year of his career, that wasn’t always the case. He walked 3.5 batters per nine innings, his most ever. That number improved once he settled into a routine in May and put the World Baseball Classic behind him, but it was a lingering problem whenever he had a sub-par start. In his first 13 innings of this postseason, he walked seven batters.

The seventh was Bryce Harper in the first inning of Game 6 against the Phillies. Just two batters earlier, Kelly had issued a free pass to Kyle Schwarber. Walking those two sluggers isn’t the worst outcome, but pitching coach Brent Strom sensed Kelly being erratic rather than careful. So he walked out to the mound, reminding Kelly to drive through the catcher, rather than pulling off towards first base. Since then, he’s walked one batter in 11 innings.

Those cues, Kelly said, are “the same thoughts every game. It's just whether that actually happens or not.” On Saturday, he didn’t need any reminders.

“When he gets his alignment, it's really good,” Lovullo said. “And that's what you did see.”

It’s happened before. Kelly struck out at least nine batters six times this year. Five of those times, he walked one or fewer.

This time, the world was watching.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: This DBacks pitcher's moment on MLB's biggest stage evens World Series