As risks go, the A’s acquisition of Shawn Kelley is not to be mistaken for drawing to an inside straight.
True, his separation from the Washington Nationals was out of the ordinary. Asked last week to mop up a game his team was leading 25-1, Kelley coughed up three runs, the final two coming on a home run by the Mets’ Austin Jackson.
Kelley didn’t have to thumb through the rule book to understand this was not a save situation. He was being asked to perform an inglorious act, baseball’s equivalent of cleaning the latrine. As Jackson’s homer sailed into the night, Kelley slammed his glove to the ground and appeared to take a good, long look at his team’s dugout before picking it up again. He later said he was upset with the home plate umpire.
The Nationals were in no mood for picking nits. Quicker that you can say, “Alexa, get me the league office,” Kelley was issued a plane ticket to ABH — Anywhere But Here. Which plainly worked for the Nationals.
“It was pretty cut and dried,” Washington general manager Mike Rizzo said the following morning after the transaction had been announced. “The act that he portrayed on the field last night was disrespectful to the name on the front of the jersey, the organization, specifically (manager) David Martinez. You’re either in, or you’re in the way and I thought he was in the way. That’s something that you don’t come back from. It was a disrespectful act. I didn’t see how he could face the rest of his teammates and the coaching staff and the manager again after such a selfish act.”
So, yeah. Out of the ordinary.
Sunday night the A’s acquired Kelley. It says here that anyone expecting to see attitude and fireworks from Kelley going forward is in for a letdown. For one thing, Kelley appears to be chastened by his actions (“You should never throw your glove,” he said, according to ESPN. “We should act like adults”). For another, the A’s did their due diligence and were unable to unearth anything unseemly in Kelley’s past — no other on-field tantrums, no embarrassing tweets. For still another, he has finished 129 games during his career and recorded just 15 saves. He’s never been a closer and it’s unlikely he will be expected to be one in Oakland. No crushing expectations here.
Baseball, like most sports, has a history of second chances. It’s not entirely based on altruism; moreso on a certain math that goes a little something like this:
“What did you do?” divided by “What can you do for me now?”
By that standard, Shawn Kelley is golden unless and until further notice.