ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Diamondbacks right-hander Merrill Kelly did not have any grand takeaways from his outing on Monday night. He did not throw well. The Tampa Bay Rays hit him hard. It was a start he seemed more interested in forgetting than dissecting.
But perhaps the thing he seemed most assured of after lasting just four innings in a 12-1 loss was that facing the Rays – the team that drafted him, the team that treated him with such ambivalence so as to compel him to leave the continent – had nothing to do with his struggles.