Diamondbacks 2022 Season Player Reviews: Carson Kelly

The D-backs starting catcher had his season marred by injury for the second year in a row.

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2022 Contract: Arbitration 2, $3,325,000

Year	G	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+	HR	RBI	WAR
2022	104	354	.211	.282	.334	.617	76	7	35	0.7
Career	415	1338	.223	.309	.383	.693	87	43	157	3.5

Note: WAR above is the average of Fangraphs and Baseball Reference

2022 Diamondbacks Season Reviews

Season Review

For the first six weeks of 2021 Carson Kelly was the hottest hitting catcher in MLB, batting .338 with an 1.103 OPS. Unfortunately injuries, including two stints on the injured list (fractured toe and wrist), wrecked the rest of his season. When he wasn't on the IL he slumped badly, his batting average dropping into the .230's and OPS in the low .700's. A surge over the last 9 games of 2021, where he went 10-for-31 with two home runs gave hope that he had fully recovered and would have a better 2022. 

Instead he got off to a dreadful start. Through May 4th of this year he was 6-for-57, .105 B.A., with just one double, two walks, and 20 strikeouts. Then the injury bug struck again, this time an oblique injury that kept him on the IL for just over five weeks. When he came back he went just 4-30 over his first nine games.

Then over his next 25 games from June 26th through August 6th he got hot, batting .354 with 8 doubles and 6 homers, raising his batting average to .231, and OPS to .679. It seemed like he had rediscovered his early 2021 form and would salvage his  2022 season. Unfortunately he slumped over the final two months, batting just .189 from August 8th onwards to end up with the very subpar batting line shown at the top of the article. 

One area that Kelly had excelled most of his career, hitting left hand pitching, went completely south in 2022 as well. He hit just .197 with two homers and a .597 OPS against southpaws. He'd previously put up huge numbers against lefties in 2019 and 2021.  Since he has not hit right handed pitching well throughout his career, not hitting lefties this year was very damaging. Especially on a team with few right handed options. Here are Kelly's career platoon splits. 

Split	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Vs. RHP	892	.207	.294	.338	.632
Vs. LHP	446	.256	.341	.473	.814

Defense

On the defensive side of the ball, he graded out roughly around average. He threw out 23% of base stealers, (14-62) vs. league average of 24%. Baseball Reference rated him +3 defensive runs saved, but Fangraphs rated him -2.7. Statcast rated him +3 run for catcher framing, but he rated just middle of the pack, 41st in pop time.

Catcher fielding metrics are not the most reliable. But Kelly seems to do a decent if unspectacular job behind the plate. He's popular in the clubhouse and handles pitchers fairly well, emerging as a leader. But Mike Hazen said he was hoping for more consistency out of the catcher position. Asked if he were likely to shore up the catching position in 2023 he responded:

"I feel like we're in a position where Carson had kind of a tale of two seasons again, yeah, we need to get a little more consistency out of that position for a full year. I think at times that position has gone pretty defensive for us...I do think at times when we've had some of our better seasons that position was defensive for us. What they do with the pitching, getting our pitching [ready] playing well behind the plate, the way we're stressing the way that WE feel that we're probably going to win games, I think that's probably an area where we need to continue to look forward. I'm pretty happy with where we're at defensively back there. l do think that chasing a little bit more offense back there, given what the rest of the roster could look like is something we might take a look at."

2023 Outlook

Kelly is entering his third year of arbitration this off season and will likely receive a salary somewhere in the $4,000,000 range. He was a "Super 2", meaning he will have a fourth year of arbitration, and will not be a free agent until after the 2024 season. He just turned 28 in July and only has 1,338 career PA. It's definitely not too late for Kelly to put it all together and have an All-Star caliber season. In order to do so he will need to stay healthy and at least get back to crushing left handed pitching as he's done in the past.