Kelly stellar, takes no-hit bid into 7th

Early Tuesday afternoon, D-backs pitching coach Matt Herges spoke with reporters and said he wanted to see his pitchers be more aggressive in the strike zone after a disappointing series in San Diego in which they walked 27 batters in four games.

Hours later, Merrill Kelly took the mound at Globe Life Field and did exactly that, attacking Rangers hitters from the get-go and carrying a no-hitter into the seventh inning as the D-backs won, 4-1.

• Box score

“I felt good,” Kelly said. “I think the biggest part for me was after our series went in San Diego, I knew today was big. I wanted to come out and set the tone, go as deep as I possibly can, give our bullpen a break and build some momentum going forward. Obviously San Diego didn’t go the way we wanted it to go so I knew coming in that it was a big game and I was happy with how it went.”

Kelly was handed a 3-0 lead before he even took the mound and they would prove to be more than enough.

After walking Joey Gallo to open the second, Kelly retired the next 13 batters before Isiah Kiner-Falefa reached on a Nick Ahmed error in the sixth. But Kelly got Shin-Soo Choo to hit into a double play to end the inning.

Kelly opened the seventh by striking out Danny Santana -- one of seven on the night -- before Rougned Odor jumped on a first-pitch changeup and hit it well over the wall in right for the Rangers' first hit. Kelly exited with two runners on and two outs in the eighth, and Andrew Chafin escaped the jam with a strikeout.

The 7 2/3 innings were the most by a D-backs starter this year, outdistancing Madison Bumgarner’s 5 2/3 on Opening Day, and Kelly followed the game plan to the letter.

“We’ve been talking about strike one and attacking the zone,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said. “Sometimes you get into a little bit of a rut and you just need some reminders from coaches. Once again, we talk about it as a staff, we go out and deliver the message and the players take it over from there and he did a great job of execution and making something good happen from the information he got.”

One of the lessons Kelly took from his 2019 season, his first year in the big leagues after spending four seasons pitching in Korea, was that he had to simplify things as much as possible.

All of his focus had to be on the pitch he was throwing and not on being in the big leagues or looking ahead or behind in a game.

That came in handy as the outs began to pile up and the Rangers were still without a hit.

“I think we’re all aware of it,” Kelly said. “I think if anybody said they had no idea, they’d be lying. I kind of knew. I just tried my best not to really think about it. I acknowledged it. I’m not going to sit there and say I was naïve and didn’t know. I just tried to execute pitches. Once you start thinking that way, you can start going down a slippery slope and start trying to make [pitches] too nasty and try to place them rather than be aggressive.”

Sometimes when a pitcher flirts with a no-hitter, things can fall apart quickly when he gives up his first hit, but after the homer to Odor, Kelly retired the last two batters of the seventh and the first in the eighth.

Kelly said he was able to do that because he wasn’t focused on the no-hitter.

“I just wanted to get the ball back and wanted to get back on the mound and move on to Gallo,” he said. “Once the ball leaves our hands, we have no power on what happens after that. It was a decent pitch, a little more on the plate than I would have liked it. He put a good swing on it. After that you’ve got to flush it and move on to the next one.”