There is, however, a bullpen-boosting trade out there that doesn’t involve Rafael Devers or Jackie Bradley Jr in Baltimore: old friend Brad Ziegler!

Ziegler, as you surely remember, pitched — and well! — for the Red Sox over about 30 innings in 2016. He posted a 1.52 ERA, 2.71 FIP and a career-best 16.1 percent strikeout-to-walk ratio while with Boston. He left for Miami that offseason (can’t really fault him there) and it hasn’t gone as well since. In the last two years, Ziegler’s posted 5.06 ERA, 4.22 FIP and a 6.5 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Maybe the best news of this hypothetical trade is that it’d cost the Red Sox next to nothing. Ziegler’s a tier or two down from the top and it’s quite the buyer’s market this year — Kelvin Herrera went to Washington for their 10th- and 11th-best prospects.

A reunion would immediately bring the Red Sox something their bullpen is mightily lacking with — a ground ball guy. Ziegler’s getting grounders at a 72 percent clip, which ranks 2nd of all qualified relievers. The Red Sox best ground ball pitcher is currently Matt Barnes, who gets them at a 55 percent clip.

If you’re worried about some of his other peripherals, I don’t blame you. The amount of hard contact he’s allowing skyrocketed from 28 percent last year to nearly 42 percent. He’s already allowed a career-high six home runs this year. There are some red flags.

The good news is that of late, he’s been better. This piece on his resurgence breaks it down nicely – Ziegler’s suffered from some bad luck and worse defense. Since being taken out of the closer’s role, Ziegler has collected seven holds and allowed only two runs in 21 innings pitched.

That’s great news for the Red Sox, who clearly don’t need a closer. I’d hear an argument that they don’t really need a set-up guy this season either, regardless of what my eyes and heart and last three years of evidence tell me. The back-end of the bullpen can be terrifying at times, but it’s worked so far. Brad Hand or Zach Britton would be awesome, sure, but having a not-barren farm system is awesome as well.

The team doesn’t need Ziegler to save or anchor the bullpen, unlike in Miami where he’s spent time as both the set-up guy and the closer. His stellar performance since returning to a middle-innings guy is encouraging, and the idea of the Red Sox having another strong mid-innings guy with an elite ground ball rate is a tantalizing one.

In one of the biggest — and quite frankly, most helpful — surprises of the Red Sox’ first half, it certainly does seem like Brock Holt is actually good again. He’s hitting .298/.370/.433 with a .802 OPS, good for a .299 TAv. That also happens to be the best TAv of his career, up 85 points from his (admittedly disappointing) 2017 campaign.

The thing that jumps off the page is just how good Holt’s been this year. He’s not just improving on last year’s dismal numbers — he’s legitimately been a very, very good MLB player through the first eight weeks of the season.

Any discussion of Holt’s resurgence should probably start with his health. Head injuries are gravely serious, and Holt’s concussion struggles last year sounded like absolute hell. At one point, he was apparently advised to play through the symptoms which — and I’m no doctor — seems like a terrible idea? They were bad enough to keep him out for large chunks of 2017, and he only ended up 164 plate appearances. Some context: he’s already at 107 plate appearances this year.

Being clear of the constant struggles that come with concussions must feel like new life for Holt. He certainly looks approximately one billion times happier this year.

On the field, however, it’s not immediately clear what, if any, adjustments he’s made. His batted-ball profile isn’t dramatically different — there’s some slight variation in the three types of contact he’s making, but nothing in the range of more than four percentage points. His exit velocity (86.2) has stayed consistent with what it’s always been, and his launch angle is still laughably low. In a time when it seems like any and every hitter’s resurgence is tied to putting the ball in the air, Holt is defying that norm.

One thing that is clear is that he’s been much more patient at the plate. He’s drawing walks at a 10 percent clip and while that’s slightly down from last year (11.6), it’s still only the second time in his career that his walk rate is in the double digits. He’s also cut his strikeouts down significantly, lowering his strikeout rate six percentage points from last season. If he stays steady at 14 percent, it would represent the best clip since 2013, when he only appeared in 26 games. For all intents and purposes, Holt is having the most disciplined year of his career at the plate.

Because I’m devoid of any real joy, I’ll point out there are some things to be wary about. Holt’s running a .345 BABIP right now, significantly higher than the league average of .294. The good news is that Holt’s always been a high-BABIP type of guy, posting better than league-average BABIP marks in four of his seven seasons. And even with a career .325 clip in that department, his current pace is more than likely not sustainable. There’s also the fact that Holt’s notoriously a first-half hitter. For his career, he’s slashed .295/.362/.416 with a .780 OPS in the first half and .238/.300/.310 with a .611 OPS in the second. Not once has he ever had a better second half offensively in any given year than he had in the first. Health aside, there’s most likely a dip coming.

We’ll cross that bridge when we get there though. Brock Holt is good again, and watching him fly around the field hugging people has been one of the biggest joys of what’s been a pretty fun season so far. Brock Holt is good again? Brock Holt is good again.

• First of all, he’s a much better hitter than what I thought. That’s presumably my fault for not following the career of Adam Lind closely enough, but baseball just has so many players. His career slash line is .272/.330/.465 with a .795 OPS. In fact, Lind has never had a slugging percentage below league average. That goes for his ISO as well. For a bench bat, that’ll play just fine.
• He’s coming off one of the best seasons of his career, in which he hit .303/.362/.513 over 301 plate appearances with the Washington Nationals. I saw a dozen or so games at Nats Park last season, and can confirm he was good.
• After his great 2013 season, Lind was slowly but surely making worse contact. In that 2013 campaign, he made hard contact 40 percent of the time. Since then, Lind’s hard-hit percentage came in at 37 percent, 37 percent, and 36 percent. Last year, he got that number right back up to 40 percent (technically 39.4, but whatever). It was the second-best hard-hit percentage of his career, so there’s hope that Lind’s coming into this year in a good spot at the plate.
• I guess you don’t want to go into the summer with Blake Swihart as your primary backup first basemen, but boy, the Red Sox continue to do a number on him. He got a semi-vote of confidence when they chose to designate Hanley Ramirez for assignment (even if that was more a financial decision than a vote of confidence in Swihart), and then immediately turn around and bring in an established player that will presumably take his spot without much effort. Free Blake Swihart.
• Lind’s defense is… something. Whether you’re a DRS person or a UZR person or anywhere in between, this is one example of when defensive numbers actually do tell a pretty complete story. It’ll be interesting to see what, if any, effect that has on Cora and Co.’s decision to pinch hit him late in important games.
• Spending the better part of a decade with the Toronto Blue Jays, he’s no stranger to playing in Boston. At Fenway Park, Lind has a career average of .294/.322/.495 with a .817 OPS. He’s played 56 games there and has 11 doubles, two triples (!!) and eight home runs in 205 plate appearances — good for a career .201 ISO. His power plays at Fenway, even as a left-handed hitter.
• Dusty Baker once spent a significant portion of a post-game press conference referring to him as Jeremy Lin, which is extremely on-brand for ol’ Dusty.

If I were a betting man (and soon I might be, shout out to SCOTUS), I’d wager that Lind finds his way on to the major league roster sooner rather than later. The team is clearly not interested in Blake Swihart, and your Brock-Holt’s-a-firstbaseman-if-he-has-to-be ideas are not welcome here. Hell, the Red Sox could get real weird and DH him occasionally. There’s unquestionably a late-August getaway game start at DH in Lind’s future. Probably in Tampa.

Header photo by Derik Hamilton — USA TODAY Sports

So how are the Red Sox lining up on defense? How do they compare against not only other teams, but their own teammates? Let’s take a look.

LEFT FIELD

In left, Benintendi’s and J.D. Martinez’s positioning is pretty similar. And when I say pretty similar, what I mean is that it is almost completely identical. Here’s how they look:

Don’t waste your time squinting and trying to decipher the two. You will get a headache from staring at the screen, not be able to fall asleep, and I don’t want that on my conscience.

On a larger scale, the Red Sox play a shallow left field. The average left fielder plays at a depth of 294 ft. Martinez plays at 290 feet, and Benintendi sets up shop at 289. Of 52 players who have been in left for at least 100 plate appearances, only Cincinnati’s Jesse Winkler plays a more shallow left field than Benintendi. That’s a not-insignificant difference, but then you remember that there’s a gigantic green wall in left field at Fenway Park and things start to make some more sense. There’s no gigantic green wall in Cincinnati, so I’m not really sure what Winkler’s excuse is.

CENTER FIELD

Here’s where it gets a little more interesting. Benintendi and JBJ are the only qualified centerfielders for the Sox, and their position could not be any more different:

For starters, you can see two dots! That is encouraging. As you might have guessed, that shallow dot is Andrew Benintendi. While the average centerfielder plays at 316 feet, Benintendi lines up at 308. Once again, it is the second-most shallow position of any qualified center fielder, this time behind the White Sox’ Adam Engel. Whether it’s his choice or something the coaches are telling him, it’s fascinating to see that Benintendi plays one of the most shallow outfields in baseball.

The deeper dot, obviously, is Jackie Bradley Jr. He still plays more shallow than the average center fielder, with JBJ settling in at 312 feet. Of the 48 qualified CF’s, JBJ’s depth puts him at 38. It gets even more interesting when you turn the calendar back a year and see that in 2017, he was setting up at 326 feet. He’s playing nearly five yards more shallow this season, which seems… dramatic.

Worried about the Red Sox shallow-playing tendencies? Don’t be. If you take a look at who JBJ is grouped with, you’ll notice names like Engel, Buxton, Marisnick, and Hamilton. What do all those names have in common? All four are in the top half of MLB’s fastest center fielders. In fact, Buxton, Engel, and Hamilton make up three of the top four. You can’t teach speed, and the wheels that the aforementioned players posses allow them to cheat in a little more than others normally would. If anything, it should be noted how impressive it is that Bradley plays a shallow center field with positionally-average speed. He doesn’t need the game-changing speed that the other players at his depth do to make the same catches.

JBJ also plays the ball as straight up as straight up can be. Of those 48 qualified CFs, only three set up at an exact zero-degree angle. I’m not entirely sure how important that actually is, but being only one of three fielders to do it seems noteworthy. To be honest I’m not sure any Red Sox fan cares what angle he lines up at if he keeps making absurd diving catches once every two innings.

RIGHT FIELD

Since there’s only one qualified Red Sox right fielder, here’s how Mookie Betts lines up against the rest of baseball:

Considering how cavernous Fenway’s right field is, it’s fascinating that Betts plays so shallow and center. He sets up at 279 feet, far far below the MLB average of 293. He also shades farther into center field than any other right fielder in baseball, standing at a 25 degree angle. The only other player that comes close to that is San Diego’s Travis Jankowski, who makes up for his dramatic angle by playing the deepest right field in baseball. Whatever the reasoning is, it’s working for Mookie. Betts currently ranks sixth in baseball with five outs above average. His Catch Percentage Added sits right at six percent, which is good for 11th-best in baseball. Add in the rest of what he’s doing this year, and Mookie can do whatever he wants and line up wherever he wants. He’ll still get the job done.

Header photo by Richard Mackson — USA TODAY Sports

On a more serious note, Smith’s injury is just the latest in a litany of them for the team’s bullpen. Tyler Thornburg hasn’t made an appearance this season and is currently being shut down for a few days. Hector Velazquez was put on the 10-day DL recently. Bobby Poyner’s spent some time there, too.

Naturally, news of Smith’s DL stint created an all-too-familiar reaction:

.@EvanDrellich: No use in pretending Red Sox bullpen is fine https://t.co/EoVqYcx8aH

— NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSBoston) May 15, 2018

The trade deadline is 76 days away. The Red Sox will certainly be in the market for bullpen help.

If you're Dave Dombrowski, why wait? https://t.co/M4umftqGTm

— Chris Mason (@ByChrisMason) May 16, 2018

Red Sox NEED to renovate their bullpen. Exceptions, Joe Kelly and Craig Kimbrel. Everyone else needs to go.

— Ozzy Torres (@ozzyunchained) May 15, 2018

I get it. There are unquestionably deeper bullpens in baseball than that of the Red Sox. But before we go smash the panic button, a few things to consider:

• The Red Sox bullpen has pitched 147.2 innings this season, which is good for 19th in baseball. You can choose to view this as a bullpen that’s still relatively unproven or you can choose to view this as a bullpen that doesn’t necessarily need to be relied on as heavily as others, thanks in part to a talented starting rotation. It’s not the strongest point, but that’s why I listed it first.
• Before Wednesday’s game, the top four relievers this year, based on FIP, have been Marcus Walden, Joe Kelly, Craig Kimbrel and Heath Hembree. The latter three are not only healthy but playing a prominent role in the bullpen; outside of Matt Barnes, no pitcher has thrown more innings than the Kelly/Kimbrel/Hembree trio.
• The Red Sox bullpen has the seventh-best FIP in baseball. Their 8.6 percent walk rate is sixth-best in the league, and their 26.3 percent strikeout rate is fifth-best. Teams aren’t hitting the ball hard against them (31.3 hard-hit percentage — seventh-best in MLB), and they’re doing an average job keeping the ball in the park (11.7 HR/FB percentage — 15th in MLB). And people say this isn’t a quality bullpen?
• Losing Carson Smith for an extended period of time again would be a colossal bummer. With that said, Smith’s season… hasn’t been all that impressive so far. His strikeout rate hasn’t quite bounced back yet and he was walking over one more batter per game. There’s been a ton of hard contact this year, too. He hasn’t been bad, per se, but the Red Sox aren’t in danger of losing their best relief pitcher if he goes down for a while.
• Joe Kelly is good this year. We’ve talked about this recently, but it’s worth repeating because hell yeah Joe Kelly is good this year. This could easily open up Joe Kelly: Set-Up Man, which is not great for my nailbeds, but those are of little importance to you and quite frankly, not that important to me either, in a gross kind of way.
• This opens the window for Bobby Poyner, which is an intriguing silver lining. Over The Monster had a nice piece on Poyner the other day, and the addition of another dominant lefty reliever is always a fun wrinkle. In the best case scenario, Poyner settles in as a late-inning lefty, giving the team 100 percent more late-inning lefty options than they had before his promotion.

Let me be clear: the Red Sox could absolutely still use some bullpen help – but they could use bullpen help in the way that every team in baseball could always use more bullpen help. Losing an average-or-barely-above-average reliever is never good, but Smith wasn’t the backbone of the Red Sox’ relief pitching. Telling Red Sox fans not to panic is more often than not an exercise in futility, but please, Red Sox fans, don’t panic about this. Panic about Andrew Benintendi, instead!

Header photo by Kim Klement — USA TODAY Sports

As an aside, I'm all set with Jackie Bradley Jr. As a 4th outfielder and defensive replacement? Sure. But any desire to put him out their regularly should be reassessed 5 minutes ago

— Michael Giardi (@MikeGiardi) May 6, 2018

If Rule Number One of Twitter is Never Tweet, Rule Number Two is Don’t Get Mad At Dumb Sports Tweets. I am not good at following either of those — that’s my cross to bear — but good grief this tweet sucks extremely hard.

First, some facts:

1. Jackie Bradley Jr. is 28 years old.
2. Jackie Bradley Jr. is not a great hitter.
3. It does not matter.

JBJ’s is in his sixth year at the MLB-level, and at this point, we know what kind of hitter he is. Sure, hitting .178/.264/.271 through the first 30-something games of the season looks bad. It is bad. But you know why it doesn’t really matter?

JBJ makes these plays with remarkable regularity. On any given night, there’s not a centerfielder in baseball with better odds at ending up on the 11 pm SportsCenter.

I’d love it if JBJ was a good hitter. When he is hitting, there aren’t many more complete players in baseball. With that said, the idea that he’s going to put it together finally and slash something like .310/.360/.534 should be buried deep, deep in the dirt and left there for good.

At 28, what we’re seeing is what we’re going to get. A piece about aging curves in baseball was published in the Hardball Times back in 2009, and take a look at what they found:

Granted, this study was released almost a decade ago, but I’d bet the results aren’t that much different today. Essentially, JBJ is currently in the middle of what should be his career’s peak. Being one of the worst hitters in baseball during what is supposed to be a peak season is frustrating, but JBJ’s just as likely to play at an MVP level over the next 30 games as he is continue this slump. That’s what he’s done, that’s what he’s doing, and that’s what he’s going to do. Besides, none of that really matters because of this:

The Red Sox don’t need JBJ to hit in order to win. There are a half-dozen players on their 25-man roster whose offensive performance matters more. Of all Red Sox hitters who had at least 400 plate appearances in 2017, no one was worse offensively than Bradley was. Even with that being true, JBJ, by WAR, was the third-most valuable position player on the team. Why? Because of shenanigans like this:

Frustration with Bradley’s inconsistency is nothing new. Defending his streakiness isn’t exactly an analytic breakthrough either. But on deeply talented offensive team with 3-4 elite power hitters, it’s time to stop being frustrated that JBJ isn’t one of them.

He’s not a great hitter, but he’s not a 4th outfielder or defensive replacement. He’s a streaky hitter who carries his weight by making catches like this once a week:

And that should be enough.

Header photo by Richard Mackson — USA TODAY Sports

Through no fault of his own, Sale took another no decision against the Royals on Tuesday night. It’s sort of his thing. Sale’s been excellent this year, and yet because he hasn’t been quite what he was last season, there’s already this weird sense of impatience building on Sale Day. So is there actually anything going on? To the charts!

One of the most noticeable changes in Sale’s season has been the velocity. Look at where his fastball is pacing currently, compared to seasons past:

That’s a little alarming, only because his fastball is currently as slow as it’s been in four years. Only once — in 2014 — has he averaged a fastball under 92 miles per hour. The good news is that it hasn’t affected his results too much yet:

Taking a look at how hitters are making contact against him, it’s clear that Sale is still pitching at a pretty elite level. He’s getting more pop-ups and ground balls while cutting back, ever so slightly, on fly balls and line drives. The amount of solid contact against him is actually down from six percent to two percent (and yet the percent of times hitters are barreling up against him is going up? Baseball actually doesn’t make any sense). His stuff still looks pretty good, too:

The one thing to keep an eye on here is the drop in zone percentage. Throwing strikes five percent less often isn’t insignificant, and that coupled with a dip in velocity is a talk radio crisis waiting to happen. An explanation? Sale is leaning more heavily on his changeup early in the season, at the cost of his slider:

After finishing 2017 throwing his slider 33 percent of the time and his change 19 percent of the time, he’s now throwing those pitches 24 percent of the time and 23 percent of the time, respectively. Basically, after throwing two sliders for every one changeup last season, he’s throwing them at an equal clip this year. That’s something to watch going forward, primarily because Sale’s slider is a significantly better pitch than his changeup. Sale’s ran close to a 50 percent strikeout rate on sliders last season. Changeups? Only 14 percent. With some context, the curious pitch selection makes more sense:

Alex Cora said yesterday Chris Sale’s been working on his mechanics and that his slider hasn’t been what he wants it to be yet. So, even putting velocity aside, you haven’t been crazy to think Sale’s been a tick off from his uber elite self

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) May 1, 2018

He’s still getting his normal amount of both in-zone swings and out-of-zone chases, though. His general swing percentage is holding steady, and his whiff rate has actually gone up a tick. For the real nerds among you, his spin rate looks pretty normal, too:

It’s hard to tell, but those little dots on the far right — his current spin rates — match up pretty closely to where he was pacing last year. That’s a good sign, especially as the weather starts to heat up, allowing pitchers to grip the ball more comfortably.

I’m not going to spend brain power worrying about Sale. Someone will, but it won’t be me, and it shouldn’t be you.

Header photo by Bob DeChiara — USA TODAY Sports

At first glance, taking a look at his plate discipline numbers doesn’t help much. He’s shown some gradual improvement – swinging less at balls and more at strikes than he did last season — but he’s swinging at roughly the same rate (44 percent) as he did last year. He’s even making more contact, too.

The slow start is a two-pronged issue. To start, take a look at where he’s being pitched to this year as opposed to the season before. Here’s his 2017 and 2018 pitch map side by side:

He’s just not getting as many good pitches to hit. It’s clearly still early, but you can see that Benintendi isn’t getting as many strikes this year.  It’s obviously a big reason why Benintendi’s drawing more walks. After drawing walks 10 percent of the time last season, he’s raised that number to over 16 percent in 2018.

Secondly, he’s not making the strong contact that he made last year. That makes sense, given the nature of how pitchers are attacking him, but Benintendi has struggled to adjust up to this point. Despite making contact at the same rate that he did last season, he’s only made hard contact 21 percent of the time this year. Given that he made hard contact 34 percent of the time last season, the sharp drop speaks for itself.

Mosey on over to Statcast and you’ll see the same thing. Benintendi’s average exit velocity (87 mph) is below league average (89 mph). His average launch angle is three degrees below league average. The ball’s just not coming off his bat like it did last year. At least not yet.

The good news is that after an icy-cold start, he’s hitting .278/.325/.427 over the last 14 days. He’s been making hard contact 29 percent of the time during that span too, a welcome trend in the right direction. One of Benintendi’s greatest strengths as a hitter is his ability to make quick adjustments, and this recent stretch has all the makings of just that.

Take a look at our baserunning data and you’ll see just what I’m talking about. The 2017 Sox were one of the worst baserunning teams in baseball. You probably already knew that from, you know, watching them ignore stop signs at 3rd ten thousand times last season, but the numbers back it up too. Of all 30 MLB teams, only 10 had worse BRRs (BaseRunnning Runs) than the Red Sox last year.  The team posted a -3.5 BRR, stuck right between Baltimore and Cleveland — though it could have been worse, as Detroit posted a -12.5 BRR.

When I was brainstorming probable culprits for the team’s underwhelming numbers on the basepaths, the usual names floated through my head. Dustin Pedroia was the worst baserunner for the Sox last year. Hanley Ramirez and Sandy Leon weren’t far off. Their struggles were definitely not Mookie Betts’ fault.

This year, the data looks a little different. After finishing as the third-best baserunner (based on BRR) on the team in 2017, JBJ shares the lowest BRR with Mitch Moreland through the first two weeks. In fact, JBJ and Moreland are the only two players on the team to have cost them a full run (-1.0). Based on that number, JBJ has been one of the worst 20 baserunners in baseball this season.

So what’s happening? To start, JBJ hasn’t done nearly as good a job of advancing on hits. After posting the third-best hit advancement runs (HAR) on the team in 2017 (0.86), he’s currently 11th (-0.25) out of the 14 qualified hitters on the Red Sox roster. What’s worse is that he’s had the second-most opportunities to advance on hits of anyone on the team so far.

It’s early. Bradley’s only gotten a handful of opportunities on the basepaths so far, and things are bound to change as numbers start to normalize over the next three or four weeks. Hell, even with JBJ not being great on advancement opportunities right now, the Red Sox are still a top-3 team in HAR right now (god bless you, Xander).

Opening the season in a slump is certainly going to play a role as well. You’re obviously not going to get a lot of chances on the bases when you’re hitting .191/.296/.255. But as is tradition, he’ll get hot, be the best hitter on the team for two weeks, and I bet his baserunning stats look just fine when that happens.

Still, they haven’t been good so far. And that’s something to keep an eye on.

Header photo by Kirby Lee — USA TODAY Sports

1. This is about as obvious as a retaliation pitch as you’ll see. Joe Kelly legitimately steps towards Austin on the pitch. People who subscribe to the notion that there’s a certain way of doing this type of thing all seemed to think Kelly did it the “right” way, and I hate myself a tiny bit more for even writing that sentence. And then leaving it in here.

2. This is a STRONG reaction from Austin. He wastes absolutely no time letting everyone know exactly what’s about to happen. The most memorable baseball fights all have immediate mound-charging, and Austin slamming the bat is gravy. And then we get Joe Kelly beckoning too? Top-notch theatrics. Baseball fights are dumb, but if you’re going to do it, do it big.

3. Shout out to Christian Vazquez for taking his mask off, seeing Austin charge the mound, and immediately putting his mask back on.

4. Aaron Judge singularly moves entire piles of players. He just sort of picks up Joe Kelly and walks away.

5. Overall game strategy is probably the last thing on Joe Kelly’s mind at any given point, but Frequent Red Sox Tweeter @OverTheMonster has a point:

Always a good idea to waste a pitcher for petty bullshit in a game where you're already burning through your entire bullpen

— OverTheMonster (@OverTheMonster) April 12, 2018

6. What’s the rule about hitting guys? Do you have one pitch to do it? Kelly not only missed him with the first attempt, but hit Austin in his second at-bat after the aforementioned slide. People don’t forget:

The only thing I would had done different than Joe Kelly tonight, is I would’ve hit Tyler Austin at his previous at bat. Other than that, Kelly executed perfectly #YankeesvsRedSox

— Pedro Martinez (@45PedroMartinez) April 12, 2018

Sorry but it’s very Joe Kelly that he missed the first time he tried to drill Tyler Austin.

— Lindsey Adler (@lindseyadler) April 12, 2018

7. Joe Kelly won, right? It seems like Kelly definitely won.

Joe Kelly literally brough Austin to the ground but Yankees fans think he didn’t win the fight pic.twitter.com/SrBqJgpBRw

— . (@GetMeAnOffense) April 12, 2018

Joe Kelly just won an entire fanbase over again in one night. That’s impressive.

Header photo by Winslow Townson — USA TODAY Sports