Two-position star athletes in high school are a dime a dozen these days. In college, it's a rarity. In professional sports, it's practically unheard of.
However, 20-year-old Red Sox prospect Casey Kelly is living proof that the multidimensional baseball star is still alive in America's pastime. But for how much longer?
The Red Sox would like to see Kelly's dual-position status of pitcher/shortstop come to an end sooner rather than later so that he can begin to focus on — and excel at — one for his future in Boston. That decision may come this offseason.
“I’m going to take a couple of weeks off and then we’ll have a couple of conversations about what’s going to go on next year — what [the Red Sox] think and how they felt the year went and how I felt," Kelly told the Boston Herald. "I think [it’s going to take] a long couple of weeks to think about the decision — what are the pros and cons of each [option] are. It’s kind of the same thing I had to go through with the draft — picking between football and baseball. That worked out great. I knew which one I wanted to do and I think this is going to be the same way.”
The 30th overall pick in the 2008 draft began his first pro season out of high school as a shortstop in rookie ball and later spent time with the Class-A Lowell (Mass.) Spinners.
In 2009, he switched to the mound and began the year as a pitcher for low Single-A Greenville (S.C.) and high Single-A Salem (Va.), going a combined 7-5 with a 2.08 ERA in 17 starts.
In the second half of the year, the Red Sox took away the rosin bag, handed him a bat and he finished the year as a shortstop in Greenville and with the Gulf Coast League team in Fort Myers, Fla., hitting .222 with 16 RBIs in 40 games.
“Nobody thought it was going to be easy,” said Red Sox director of player development Mike Hazen. “We knew that when we started down this path. We care what he has to say. We’re not going to dictate anything to him. And no matter what happens, we think Casey Kelly is going to have a great career.”
Although he doesn't admit it, it appears as though Kelly preferred shortstop over pitching last summer. But it was on the hill this past summer that Kelly earned a couple of impressive honors: Red Sox Minor League Pitcher of the Year and a trip to the 2009 MLB Futures Game.
“When I was pitching,” he said, “I did miss being on the field and being a part of every game and hitting BP and hitting in the game. When I changed over to shortstop, I didn’t really think about pitching or anything like that. I think trying to separate the two was the biggest thing for me — not thinking about pitching when I was hitting and not thinking about hitting when I was pitching.”
