Reds Select Casey Kelly

The Reds have selected the contract of right-hander Casey Kelly, per a club announcement. Right-hander Alan Busenitz was designated for assignment to make room for Kelly on the club’s 40-man and active rosters.

Kelly, 34, was a first-round pick in the 2008 draft and a consensus top-100 prospect early in his pro career with the Red Sox. Kelly was packaged with Anthony Rizzo in the deal that brought Adrian Gonzalez to Boston from San Diego, and Kelly’s pedigree as a top pitching prospect helped him to reach the majors during just his second year in the Padres organization. That big league debut left much to be desired, as Kelly pitched to a lackluster 6.21 ERA in 29 innings of work across six starts with the Padres during the 2012 season. Tommy John surgery wiped out Kelly’s entire 2013 season, and he wouldn’t make it back to the majors until 2015 when he surrendered 13 runs (10 earned) in just 11 1/3 innings of work across three appearances.

That ended Kelly’s Padres tenure, and while he briefly found a role with the Braves as a multi-inning reliever during the 2016 season, he wouldn’t find success in the majors until 2018, six years after his big league debut. In San Francisco, Kelly did quite well while swinging between the rotation and bullpen, but even that success was short-lived as his 3.04 ERA spanned just seven appearances and 23 2/3 innings of work. Kelly’s brief stint with the Giants evidently earned him some attention overseas, however, as after parting ways with the Giants he went on to pitch in parts of six seasons for the Korea Baseball Organization’s LG Twins.

In Korea, Kelly was a rotation stalwart who made between 27 and 30 starts each year from 2019 to 2023 while never posting an ERA higher than 3.83. Kelly reportedly received some stateside interest this past offseason but chose to remain overseas, though his sixth season in the KBO did not go particularly well as he struggled to a 4.51 ERA in 19 starts before being cut loose last month. That led him back to affiliated ball, where he signed a minor league deal with the Reds and was assigned to Triple-A Louisville. Kelly was managed by his father, Pat Kelly, while pitching for Louisville and performed decently in two starts, with a 4.50 ERA despite a strikeout rate of just 5.6%. Recent injuries to Hunter Greene and Andrew Abbott have now opened the door for Kelly to make his first big league appearance since 2018, and the journeyman figures to provide Cincinnati with multi-inning relief depth out of the bullpen while the club utilizes a patchwork rotation featuring Julian Aguilar and Carson Spiers alongside Nick Lodolo and Nick Martinez.

Making way for Kelly on the 40-man and active rosters is Busenitz, who departs the club after making just one appearance in the majors this year. In a disastrous relief outing for the Reds yesterday, the right-hander surrendered four runs (three of which were earned) on four hits while failing to strike out a batter in his single inning of work. Busenitz also pitched for the Reds last year and did quite well in a limited role with a 2.57 ERA and 2.26 FIP across seven frames. Busenitz’s time with the Reds was his first taste of big league action in nearly half a decade, as he spent four seasons pitching for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball from 2019 to 2022. The majority of Busenitz’s limited big league experience came prior to his time overseas, when he pitched to a middling 4.58 ERA in 51 appearances across the 2017 and ’18 seasons in Minnesota.