PHOENIX -- Merrill Kelly found an in-game routine he could live with Wednesday at Chase Field. It started with some common sense.
Kelly stayed looser between innings in the dugout rather than go into cool-down mode, and the cramping issues that forced him to leave two of his past three starts were non-existent.
“I tried moving around a little more,” Kelly said after allowing three runs over 6 1/3 innings in a 7-1 loss to the Mets.
“I tried not to shut down,” Kelly said. “Tried not to cool off too much. I felt like I was maybe trying to down-regulate a little too much between innings and then expecting the nervous system to go out and fire.”
Kelly said his between-innings routine was nothing particularly rigorous, not like “I was doing burpees or running sprints in the cage.” At the same time, he did not use a dugout fan to cool down between innings.
It may be too early to declare the persistent issue solved, but something obviously worked in his first outing since throwing only five innings and 60 pitches before cramping in Philadelphia last Friday.
Kelly pitched into the seventh inning for the first time this season and threw a season-high 98 pitches. He gave up only two hits in the first six innings, but the D-backs trailed 1-0 when Juan Soto homered off him with one out in sixth.
Kelly came to the conclusion that he might have been asking too much of his body at certain times.
“There were innings when I would completely stop sweating, and then I’d shoot back out [to the mound],” Kelly said. “When you sit around for however long and cool down, it is hard to do something physical. I was asking my nervous system to shut down as much as it could, and then asking it to fire on the highest level.
“I don’t know if there is any merit or science or anything behind that, but in my mind that’s kind of where we went today. I just believe my body was probably confused. So that’s what we went with today, and we’ll keep going at it. As far as that goes, obviously we didn’t get a win on the field, but for me no cramps was obviously a win.”
Kelly struck out six and did not walk a batter. He had only one three-ball count, which occurred when facing nemesis Pete Alonso with a runner on second and two outs in the third
Alonso, who has three career homers off Kelly, hit a shallow fly to left field to conclude a 10-pitch at-bat. Kelly cruised through the next two innings, an eight-pitch fourth and a 10-pitch fifth. He had retired nine in a row until Soto’s homer broke the scoreless tie.
“You get that type of start from Merrill, you are expecting to win the game,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said. “We just couldn’t get enough points.
“Overall, the concerns that we had about Merrill, would he be ready? He addressed those and did an excellent job. He was cruising. He was pounding the zone. He was in a really good spot.”
Kelly faced four batters in the seventh -- the Nos. 5-8 hitters in the Mets’ lineup -- and allowed three hits before giving way to reliever Jalen Beeks.
“I had complete confidence in that part of the lineup that he was going to be able to do it,” Lovullo said about sending Kelly out for the seventh after 83 pitches. “Maybe [he] just ran out of gas a little bit.”
Kelly chalked the seventh-inning issues to fatigue and mostly decent pitches, although he said the 0-1 curve that Luisangel Acuña lined into center field for an RBI single “was just a bad curveball.”
“Overall, I felt good. [I] was executing pitches pretty well,” Kelly said. “Early in the game, the curveball was good, probably the best it has been in a while. Just ran out of a little bit of rope at the end."
The D-backs put two runners on base in each of the first three innings, with Mets right-hander Kodai Senga walking five of the first 10 batters he faced. But they had two runners thrown out on the basepaths to blunt threats in the first and second innings.
After Senga walked the first two batters of the third, Geraldo Perdomo was asked to bunt, but his ball dribbled two feet in front of the plate and the Mets got a forceout at third before Pavin Smith hit into an inning-ending double play.
“It’s that gray area,” Lovullo said. “My projection was I wanted to get us to a lead and protect Merrill with our positive-role relievers.”