As announced on the team’s twitter feed, Merrill Kelly will be a member of the starting rotation to open the season. He will be the 5th starter, and pitch the first game in Texas on July 28th.
While this does not come as a surprise, it was anything but certain that Kelly would be in the starting rotation when spring training originally opened in February. In fact most of the speculation was that he would be in the bullpen, as 6th or 7th starter depth. However with the delay to the season due to the Pandemic, and then Mike Leake opting out, suddenly Kelly’s opportunity presented itself once again to be a starter.