Turns out slam-fest over the weekend against the Chicago White Sox means very little to Merrill Kelly, Ketel Marte, and the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The five days that elapsed between the Giants last meeting with starter Kelly wasn’t enough to cleanse the palate. The 2026 Giants can’t figure him out, nor could they over the past seven seasons either. He’s now collected a quality start in his last six games against San Francisco, a streak that dates back to September 2023. Over 22 starts in his career, Kelly has posted a 3.30 ERA over 133.2 innings pitched. That’s a solid two-thirds of a season in which Kelly has pitched admirably against the Giants. Results that bear a quiet dignity, like if a minor British Royal was on the mound. Kelly doesn’t light up the radar gun. He relies heavily on a change-up and a variety of low-90s fastballs that he cuts, sinks, and places pretty much where he wants it. The 37 year old has never been the ace or the star. His celebrity doppelganger is Chris Elliot, who is someone you don’t know by name but absolutely recognize. Elliot isn’t going to win an Oscar, and Kelly probably won’t ever win a Cy Young, or even an All Star nod, but he’s made a career out of dotting 90 MPH cutters on the outside corner of the zone. As Mike Krukow likes to point out, there are throwers and pitchers, and Kelly is the latter.
After a really rough start to the year in which he allowed 19 runs across three consecutive starts, Kelly has found his footing, and the Giants have played an integral part in regaining his form. Kelly has now won his last four starts, following up a quality start (3 ER, 6 IP) on May 25th with another rock solid outing, allowing 2 earned runs on 4 hits over 7 innings pitched in San Francisco’s 6-2 loss.
The only breakthrough against him came in the 4th when Rafael Devers took on Triple’s Alley with the second-longest double in the Majors (the longest was hit by Devers yesterday). At the time, it gave the Giants a 2-1 lead. Which was nice. It’s fun when your team is down by a run and then a pitch later, your team is up for a run. Like many leads this year, this feeling of positivity and good-will proved fleeting. I was listening to the game on the radio as I warmed up for my softball game, and the goodwill bought by Devers’s double lasted about as long as it took for me to move a milk carton full of softballs from the left field foul pole to the right.
While Landen Roupp was perhaps not the sharpest he’s been, it was a couple of costly defensive mistakes in the 5th that Arizona capitalized. Number-9 hitter Tommy Troy reached second on a throwing error by Willy Adames. Ketel Marte tied on the next pitch when Casey Schmitt, playing left due to the health of Heliot Ramos and Jung Hoo Lee, misplayed an opposite-field flare. Maybe a more experienced or confident corner outfielder would’ve reeled the ball in, but with an xBA of .610, it’s hard to argue that Ramos, or any other player on the Giants roster who’s played left this year, is that outfielder. The major mistake on the play wasn’t not catching the ball, but letting it skip past. Instead of a single with runners on the corners giving Roupp to work out of it (which he essentially did in the 3rd), the lead was gone, and the Diamondbacks were set-up to retake it.
By the time the 4-run 5th was over Roupp had thrown 93 pitches. He bagged 7 strikeouts but lacked an efficiency in at-bats (against a tough contact-oriented Arizona lineup to be fair) to survive any deeper in the game. The error and misplay obviously didn’t help either. And with Roupp out of the game and Joel Peguero in, Marte continued to be the bat-wielding version of Kelly, extending Arizona’s lead with a 2-RBI single that effectively put the game to bed.
That’s two wins in a row for Kelly, four more hits and three more runs batted in for Marte (bumping up his totals to 10 H and 10 RBI vs. SF), and Arizona’s fourth win in as many games so far against our Giants.