Chicago White Sox: 2022 player grade for Joe Kelly

The Chicago White Sox addressed a lot of the wrong needs during the 2021-22 off-season. One of the mistakes that they made was the signing of Joe Kelly. It seemed like a good bullpen signing at the time but he was mostly injured and bad throughout the 2022 season.

Kelly started the year hurt and didn't return for a while. When he did return, you almost wish he wasn't on the team because of the fact that most bullpen arms would be much better than him.

Every time he allowed runs you couldn't help but wish someone else was in there pitching instead which is weird to think about Joe Kelly who was so good for so long before joining the White Sox. Winning the World Series twice with two different teams certainly didn't help him this year.

He had a WAR of -0.6 and it is easy to see why. In 43 appearances, he had an ERA of 6.08 and a WHIP of 1.595. He did have 53 strikeouts in 37.0 innings pitched but his non-strikeout victims did so much damage against him so it didn't matter much. The White Sox needed much more out of him.

As mentioned before, he has a resume that made you want to believe in him but it just never really clicked for him while on the south side in 2022. Despite his injury, he was clearly used too much.

Final grade: F

Joe Kelly gets an F for the way that he pitched in 2022. His negative WAR was bad enough to earn him an F because he just really failed to bring what they needed as they were trying to win.

Whenever you are one of the most disappointing teams in the league, you have to look at who underperformed and Joe Kelly did that for sure. That's not to say that it was all his fault that they went 81-81 but he was a big part of it.

There is a chance that he is back next year as he is under contract. If they were to trade him, he would likely be a throw-in with someone better. We can only hope that he (along with most of the team) can bounce back in 2023 if he is still there.