Kelly had a one-pitch appearance Tuesday, retiring Detroit's Ian Kinsler on a slider in Boston's 9-8 loss, Julian Benbow of the Boston Globe reports.

EDGE Analysis

Kelly is adjusting to life out of the bullpen and part of that adjustment is using all of the pitches available to him. When he was called up to Boston over the weekend, he told reporters his mindset is trying to strike everyone out as a reliever. On Monday, he relied heavily on the fastball, hitting 100 mph multiple times, but velocity didn't stop Detroit's Justin Upton from tripling and eventually scoring the winning run. "The same thing applies in this role as it did while he was starting," Boston manager John Farrell said. "His need to use the secondary pitches exists. That's going to always be a part of Joe's plan for success - that he can't rely just on velocity because as we've seen, the swing-and-miss rate is low despite upper-90s to 100 miles an hour." Going forward, Kelly said he'll need to rely on his slider more often in order to keep hitters off balance.