Dodgers set to acquire Joe Kelly and Lance Lynn from White Sox, fortifying pitching staff

With their first pitching trade before next week’s deadline, the Dodgers are set to add depth to their rotation and bullpen.

The team is nearing a trade with the Chicago White Sox to acquire starting pitcher Lance Lynn, the 12-year veteran and two-time All-Star, and right-handed reliever Joe Kelly, a former Dodger who was part of their 2020 World Series team, according to a person with knowledge of the situation unauthorized to speak publicly.

The return for the deal, which was first reported by USA Today, wasn’t immediately known.

Lynn won’t arrive in Los Angeles with very auspicious numbers.

In what has been a down season for the 36-year-old, Lynn’s surface statistics have been some of the worst in baseball this year.

In 21 starts, he has a 6-9 record and 6.47 ERA. He has given up the most hits in the American League, and the most runs in all the majors. His WHIP is 1.462, the second-highest of his career. And even his fielding independent pitching (a stat similar to ERA that tries to control for the variables of defense) is 5.22, the highest of his career by almost half a run.

So where exactly is the upside?

Evaluators point to a couple areas.

He has a strong strikeout rate of 26.9%, aided in part by his low velocity but high-spin fastball (it only averages 92.4 mph but generates whiffs more than a third of the time).

He has an unusually poor home run to fly ball rate, a stat that typically regresses to the mean over large sample sizes.

The eye test has been better than his numbers would suggest, too. As one rival scout described it this month: “His results have been trash. But he’s still not terrible.”

And for a Dodgers team getting little results-wise from its cast of unproven rookies starters, the hope is that a few tweaks to Lynn’s approach (perhaps against left-handed hitters, who have a 1.037 OPS against him) can lead to a late-season rebound from the veteran, one that could at the very least help him eat innings at the bottom of the Dodgers rotation.

The arrival of Kelly — a former fan favorite for his high-leverage heroics and off-field antics, such as sporting a mariachi jacket to the White House — should be more warmly welcomed.

The 12-year veteran spent three seasons (2019-2021) in Los Angeles and went 2-0 with a 2.67 ERA in 60 games over his final two campaigns, giving up one earned run in 3⅔ innings of five playoff games to help the club win the World Series in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

The former Corona High School and UC Riverside standout, who also pitched for the World Series-winning Boston Red Sox in 2018, parlayed those two strong seasons for the Dodgers into a two-year, $17-million deal with the White Sox.

Kelly went 2-8 with a 5.59 ERA and 1.470 WHIP (walks plus hits per innings pitched) in 74 games in Chicago 2022-2023, including a 1-5 record and 4.97 ERA in 31 appearances, with 41 strikeouts and 12 walks in 29 innings, this season, but it’s not because of diminished stuff.

The 6-foot-1, 175-pound Kelly actually boosted the average velocity of his two-seam sinking fastball from 97.9 mph in 2022 to 99.0 mph this season, and the average velocity of his slider (91.9 mph) and curveball (89.4 mph) are also up.

But Kelly has yielded a .304 average (seven for 23) in at-bats ending with his sinker, while giving up only three hits in 23 at-bats (.120) in at-bats ending with his slider and two hits in 17 at-bats (.118) in at-bats ending with his curve.

This is a developing story that will be updated.