NEW YORK -- Merrill Kelly has had rough first innings before, but one thing the D-backs right-hander has always excelled at is finding a way to settle back in, find his rhythm and chew up innings.
Thursday night against the Yankees, though, Kelly wasn¡¯t able to get back on track. He wound up allowing a career-high nine runs as the D-backs fell, 9-7, at Yankee Stadium.
Even with the loss, the D-backs head to Washington, D.C. feeling good about taking two of three from the Yankees, who had opened their season by bludgeoning the Brewers in a three-game sweep.
The game got off to an inauspicious start when Ben Rice led off the bottom of the first with a deep fly ball to center that Alek Thomas lost in the twilight sky. It bounced over his head for a ground-rule double.
Later in the inning, left fielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. also had trouble with Trent Grisham's fly ball that split the gap and led to a run.
The Yankees scored four runs in the inning, three of which came on an Aaron Judge homer, and then scored two more in the third and three in the fourth before Kelly was removed.
¡°Just a bad day against a good team,¡± said Kelly. ¡°I think they did a really good job of sticking to their game plan.¡±
Kelly had an idea of what that game plan was. But it was one of those nights for a pitcher when nothing seemed to be working.
¡°Getting bad counts, getting behind guys,¡± Kelly said. ¡°Couldn't throw anything on the inside part of the plate to lefties. Had trouble getting to the outside part of the plate to righties. When you get bad counts like that, and they can zero in on fastballs over the plate ¡ when a team is a good team like that, it¡¯s not going to end well for you.¡±
By the time Kelly left the game, the D-backs were down 9-3, and it seemed like the Yankees would cruise the rest of the way.
But in the seventh, Yankees reliever Ryan Yarbrough walked the first two hitters he faced, then allowed a single to load the bases.
Geraldo Perdomo then unloaded them with a homer to right. Suddenly, it was a 9-7 game.
¡°We kept fighting,¡± manager Torey Lovullo said. ¡°We kept making it a game. I¡¯ve been in this stadium for a long time, I¡¯ve been in a lot of games in this stadium, and I just felt like there¡¯s no lead that¡¯s safe. And Geraldo came up and hit the grand slam that put us right back in the game.¡±
All those runs scored by his teammates left Kelly even more disappointed postgame.
¡°The most frustrating part of tonight is not being able to kind of settle down and calm the ship after the first couple innings,¡± Kelly said. ¡°Your offense puts up seven runs, you want to feel like you got a pretty good shot of winning that game, you know? And I've got to do my job. They tried their best to pick me up tonight, and I've got to do a better job of picking them up and kind of locking things down.¡±
It¡¯ll be back to the drawing board for Kelly in the days before his next start as he looks to tighten things up. But having been around for a while, he knows how it works.
¡°You go out one game and you feel the best you¡¯ve ever felt,¡± Kelly said. ¡°Then you go out the next time and it feels like you¡¯ve never thrown a baseball before.¡±