Merrill Kelly is headed back to the desert.<\/p>\n
The starting pitcher agreed to a two-year, $40 million deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks<\/a>, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n Kelly, 37, spent six-and-a-half years with the Diamondbacks before a mid-season trade to the Texas Rangers at July’s deadline.<\/p>\n After posting strong numbers in Arizona, however, he struggled for the Rangers. Across both teams, he finished the season with a 3.52 ERA and 167 strikeouts over 32 starts and 184 innings pitched.<\/p>\n For his career, Kelly owns a 3.77 ERA in 1,008.1 innings and 172 starts.<\/p>\n The Diamondbacks, who finished fourth in the NL West at 80-82, had a hole to fill in their rotation with starter Zac Gallen on the open market. They also added Calgary’s Michael Soroka earlier this off-season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Merrill Kelly is headed back to the desert. The starting pitcher agreed to a two-year, $40 million deal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-344876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}