BRADENTON, Fla. -- Derek Shelton hasn't made clear his choice for closer. He told DK Pittsburgh Sports at PiratesFest last month he'd prefer to let that play out, while also citing Kyle Crick and Keone Kela as candidates.
Dejan Kovacevic interviewed Crick on this Tuesday morning, and I did likewise with Kela.
Kela's resume to be the closer speaks for itself. He was used as the eighth inning guy for most of 2019, he posted some strong numbers in 2019 -- including a 2.12 ERA and 1.01 WHIP while averaging 10 strikeouts for every nine innings pitched -- and he has experience in the role. In fact, he was the Rangers' closer before the Pirates acquired him during the 2018 trade deadline. In the first four months of that season, he saved 24 of his 25 opportunities. He has been as reliable as they come on the mound over the last three seasons.
Even if Kela is not the closer, he will be pitching high leverage innings late in the ball game.
“I think he’s going to pitch very meaningful innings at the back end of the game," Shelton said during PiratesFest in January. "I’m excited to watch him. I mean, it’s a big arm with really good stuff. I’ve had multiple good conversations with him this offseason.”
Pitching the ninth is just about every relief pitcher's dream, but when asked if he wants to return to the closer's role, Kela responded, "I just want to win ball games. I don't care how we get it done."
"These last two years since coming over here, we haven't really won anything or done anything spectacular. I just want to be part of a winning culture, winning opportunity," Kela was telling me. "Whatever we have to do, whatever the necessary means are to put dubs on the board, I'm willing to go for it.
"If I have to pitch in the seventh inning to secure the win, then that's what I'll do. If it's in the ninth, then that's what I'll do. I'm not looking out here to come in with a label. I just looking to go out there and perform to the best of my ability."
When Kela was acquired, part of the discussion surrounding him was that he could theoretically do just that: Pitch in the seventh, eighth or ninth inning based on potential matchups. However, he mostly settled into the eighth innings his first two years with the Pirates.
Kela and I would go on to talk about scenarios for 2020, including how the new three-batter minimum rule would impact bullpen management and the strategy of using a team's, quote-unquote, best reliever in the highest leverage situation rather than saving them for the ninth and hoping they pitch in a meaningful situation.
Of course, there is a great deal of glory surrounding the title of closer.
Kela has moved beyond that.
"I used to get caught up in the labels and positions and stuff like that, but the game's so dynamic now that no matter what inning you pitch, you have to be a closer," he said.
The Pirates have the potential to have that bullpen with multiple closer-level relievers, whether it's Kela, Crick, Richard Rodriguez or other pitchers with good stuff but have just not been able to put it all together. But last year, the bullpen combined for a 4.91 ERA and blew 24 saves.
There were a multitude of reasons why most of that bullpen did not pitch well in 2019, but perhaps most of all, it was coaching. After nearly a decade, Clint Hurdle and Ray Searage's messages had grown stale and outdated. They were not able to reach players like they had once had, and with advancements in technology and pitching and hitting ideologies, they had fallen behind the rest of the league.
"I think it was a time for a change of pace for everything, and I think that's exactly what we did," Kela said.
In Searage's place this year is pitching coach Oscar Marin, who was Kela's first pitching coach in 2012 with the Rangers rookie-level team.
Just 37 years old, Marin is young enough to be a player himself, but he still has a decade's worth of coaching experience in professional baseball. That youth, and knowledge of utilizing information and analytics from Trackman and Rapsodo, help make him a good fit, as is his even-keeled nature.
Above all else, Kela loves his reliability.
"He has a universal way of looking at things. He's not a cookie-cutter guy with his thought process or his ideologies on pitching or how to go about it," Kela said. "He's a player-centric type of guy. He's willing to be assertive -- and I mean that in the most respectful way -- because he goes out of his way to tend to what our needs are and to help us figure out what we need to do to better ourselves."
Kela spoke with earnestness throughout our roughly five-minute conversation, not sounding like he was saying these things just because that's what a good teammate would do. He sounded like a veteran who had been through a lot of losing the last two years. While the Pirates were within striking distance of the division at the All-Star break, Kela spent most of that run on the injured list. When he returned in late July, the team's second-half collapse was already well underway.
This year represents a fresh start with a coaching staff and leadership that has very vocally said they want to be player-first. A chance to get the most out of players. A chance for some to redeem themselves after a disappointing 2019. A chance for others to benefit from new coaching and maybe break out.
And yes, even a chance to build that new, better culture, and in Kela's case, possibly be the closer.
"I'm excited for the season to start," Kela said. "I'm excited for the opportunity to receive that label, to be the closer. I'm just looking for having a healthy spring, a productive spring and a dominant spring."
