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If you’ve ever been on Baseball Twitter, or really any part of Baseball Internet, you’re familiar with Joe Kelly’s Great Stuff™. It’s been memed. It’s been looked at seriously. It’s allowed certain former BP Local site managers to get away with extreme abuse of editorial privilege. Any time Joe Kelly appears in a game the Great Stuffs start rolling in, from tweeters and commenters and Kelly’s colleagues in equal measure.

But just where did the saga of Joe Kelly Has Great Stuff begin, and how did we get to where we are now? Who is primarily responsible for the meme? These are the types of questions we’ve all been asking. These are the kinds of questions to which you deserve the answers.

To find out, I took a brief look into unironic descriptions of Joe Kelly’s stuff by people in or reporting on baseball. Again, unironic, so apologies to Tim Britton, Brian MacPherson, and Evan Drellich, whose collective Great Stuff Awareness disqualifies them (but not their reporting) from this hunt.

JOE KELLY STUFF DESCRIPTORS

HIS STUFF IS …

WHO SAID IT? (source)

WHEN?

Good … Great

David Ortiz

11/13/2013

Really good

Ben Cherington

7/31/2014

Very good

John Farrell

8/1/2014

Great

Mike Napoli

8/4/2014

… plays anywhere

David Ross

9/21/2014

Electric

Peter Gammons

12/4/2014

The best

John Farrell

2/26/2015

Excellent

John Farrell

2/28/2015

Great

Matt Yallof

3/2/2015

So good

ESPN

3/3/2015

Big-time

John Farrell

4/27/2015

… there’s no denying his

John Farrell

5/25/2015

… gotta love his

Jerry Remy

2/29/2016

Explosive

Kevin Boles

5/16/2016

Great

John Farrell

5/29/2016

Terrific

John Farrell

6/2/2016

Premium

John Farrell

4/7/2017

As you can tell, I ran out of steam a bit there at the end, but in about 45 minutes of research I found 17 distinct references that directly describe Joe Kelly’s stuff from people inside baseball. And believe me friends, I was selective.

Selective enough to omit this:

And this:

And this:

Those tweets don’t directly describe Joe Kelly’s stuff, so I left them out. Sort of.

Either way, the first reference to the greatness of Kelly’s stuff I can find from anyone inside baseball is from Ortiz in late 2013, recounting facing Kelly in the 2013 World Series. Yes, it’s easy to forget now, but there was a time when Kelly’s … evocative repertoire … was used against the Red Sox, and not in their service.

So how did we get to the point where a man with a career 3.91 ERA, who’s most famous for an embarrassing Cy Young prediction, is synonymous with an industry's propensity to fetishize “stuff?” How does one player—your standard doomed-starter-turned-sporadically-effective-reliever—now embody baseball’s willingness to overlook command, control, and execution if pitches look pretty or go fast?

To me, the answer is obvious.

Do you blame the first person who ever got the flu for all subsequent influenza outbreaks? No, so it’s not David Ortiz’s fault. Do you blame the reporters who just want to get in on the action? No, it’s a long season and they need the entertainment. Do you blame someone like me, who’s just trying to get some lolz on Twitter? No. And if you do, I don’t care.

Because it’s clear who you should blame. You should blame John Farrell.

In the study of 17 Joe Kelly Stuff references above, Farrell was responsible for eight of them. If we narrow that down to Joe Kelly Stuff references from 2016 or later, we’re at 60 percent.

I mean, just look at this:

More than 800,000 results linking Joe Kelly, stuff, and John Farrell. Might one or two of those be duplicative instances? I mean, maybe. But the numbers speak for themselves here. You might think Farrell is just a manager sticking up for his player, but I think it goes deeper than that. I think he knows.

Farrell is The Gravemind and Joe Kelly’s Great Stuff references are The Flood. Farrell is @dril and everyone else is the RTers. It’s so contagious, even Joe Kelly himself is falling for the stuff-describing craze. Here’s what Kelly said to Christopher Smith of MassLive.com when talking about playing catch with Chris Sale:

He's got obviously great stuff and with a little bit of funk. That's what makes him so good.

Is Kelly himself in on the joke? Is Farrell in on it? Are any of us truly in on it? Is it even a joke anymore?

Maybe not, because while Joe Kelly Has Great Stuff is often used ironically … it’s true. The offspeed pitches move. The fastball has crazy life. He was dominant as a reliever last season. I mean, look at this. And even more incredibly, look at this:

Like it or not Farrell has a point, because you can’t tell me a pitcher can do that without great stuff.

You just don’t have to tell me about his stuff as often.

Thank you for reading

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roarke
4/12
When he was with the Cardinals, Mike Matheny called him a "Ferrari sitting in the garage," so, while the word "stuff" wasn't used, I think the sentiment goes back before his Red Sox days: http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/joe-kelly-s-chances-have-been-few/article_b9e13feb-bbc1-5863-9ff7-7b569ed17475.html
BenC22
4/12
If only Matheny had said "Joe Kelly's Stuff is like a Ferrari," we'd really be cooking :(
bhacking
4/12
Nice article - good stuff.
mschneider42
4/12
Joe Kelly is also very fast. I drafted him on my fantasy team in 2014 and I remember in his first couple of starts every time he batted the Cardinals announcer would talk about how fast he gets down the first base line. In his third game he pulled a muscle running and was out for three months.
BenC22
4/12
I lol'd
mullin
4/12
This is an affront to @dril
mattymatty2000
4/12
Great stuff, Ben!
gandriole
4/13
Not to go all BFIB, but this article seems to overlook the fact that Kelly has thrown more MLB innings for the Cardinals than Red Sox.
BenC22
4/13
Unfortunately you have indeed gone full BFIB.