NEW YORK — Hours before the three-run homer flew into the Queens night and punctuated another dramatic victory, Carson Kelly sat at his locker and reflected on a nine-month period that started with turbulence and has ended with gratitude.

Kelly’s path here — a Detroit Tigers catcher who has come up with three big-time hits in four games this season — began last August. That’s when he was designated for assignment by the Arizona Diamondbacks, the organization where he spent five years and first blossomed into a fully formed big leaguer.

“I mean, it hurts,” Kelly said. “I think as baseball players it’s what we sign up for. We sign up to play the game, and eventually, the game moves on, right?”

Sometimes professional mortality hits you like that. Kelly was once a promising young catcher for the Snakes, a 24-year-old who homered 18 times in 2019. By last summer Gabriel Moreno had usurped him as Arizona’s backstop of the future, and Kelly was an oft-injured veteran plagued by bad luck.

This time last year, Kelly was home, stuck on the couch, pondering his life and luck after a 101 mph fastball in spring training collided with his wrist and shattered his ulna. It was his fifth broken bone in three years. By the time he made his season debut on June 12, the Diamondbacks were in the playoff hunt. Kelly tried to will his way back. But the injury was gruesome. The muscle in his arm atrophied during his recovery. Two months after he returned to play, Kelly was hitting .226, wasn’t connecting with any authority, and the D-Backs moved on.

Kelly admits now a portion of his joy, the passion for baseball that first set an Oregon kid on the path to the major leagues, started to wane.

“When you sit on the couch for four months and you just miss being in the clubhouse, miss the routine, miss hanging with the guys, it puts a damper on your mood, right?” Kelly said. “We’re all people. If you don’t get to do something you love, you’re kind of like, ‘Man, this sucks,’ and you kind of get down in the dumps.”

Thrust into free agency, a once-promising career now in jeopardy, Kelly had to confront harsh realities. He had time to think about the uncertainties.

“You get hurt, you miss a lot of time, you’re not playing, you’re not hanging out with the guys,” Kelly said. “You’re rehabbing and you’re trying to get back, and you’re trying to get back, and you’re trying to get back. And then, it was some low points.”

Late night pizza in New York City, grab a slice! 🍕 pic.twitter.com/9l5mr5sF9A

— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) April 2, 2024

Perhaps not even Kelly could have fully envisioned the path forward that soon appeared. Shortly after he became a free agent, he received a call from Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, a former catcher himself trying to revitalize his managerial career with an organization in need of talent.

Hinch’s message to Kelly: “If you want to get better, this is the spot for you.”

The Tigers approached Kelly with specific changes in mind. They wanted him to adopt a one-knee setup behind the plate. They identified swing changes that could help him drive the ball in the air and on a line more often.

“Sounds pretty good, right?” Kelly said. “I think having the relationships and having those conversations with him, it was like, ‘You know what? This feels right.’”

Kelly arrived when the Tigers were in Cleveland. He replaced a hometown favorite in Eric Haase. And he embarked on a six-week crash course that also served as a tryout to determine whether the Tigers would pick up the club option they included in his contract.

The changes at first were difficult. Switching from a traditional crouch to one knee — a way to help Kelly get lower and more athletic and thus improve his pitch framing — may sound simple. Not so for a catcher. The year before, backstop counterpart Jake Rogers drilled endlessly with the one-knee setup as he recovered from injury. When he first started practicing, Rogers grew frustrated, and catching coordinator Ryan Sienko laughed.

Implementing a serious swing overhaul, too, is no easy task in the middle of a major-league season. The early returns were nothing to brag about, but Kelly took the challenge in stride.

“I think you just get to that point where you’re like, ‘All right, I got to regroup and restart,’” Kelly said. “Clean slate, how do we get back into it?”

Even by the end of the season, the Tigers saw Kelly progress more through the process than the results. He finished his short stint with the Tigers hitting only .173 in 18 games. The Tigers, though, saw enough to pick up his option. And during his end-of-year meeting with Hinch, he felt optimistic about the road ahead. It was the first time he had felt that way in a long time.

“I’ve recaptured the love for the game,” Kelly said. “After everything I went through, breaking my arm and the struggles, I think a lot of guys gain perspective on how special it is to be a big leaguer. It kind of lit that fire again, and that was something that I took into the offseason, and it’s still here today.”

Over the winter, Kelly got to work. “The most focused and organized offseason I’ve had,” Kelly said, crediting his work with the Tigers staff and his own instructors. He arrived at spring training with an altered setup at the plate, his hands lower, his path to the ball designed to maximize the window for hard contact.

By the end of spring, Hinch declared Kelly and Rogers, who hit 21 home runs last season, would be a “true tandem” behind the plate. Kelly found his footing with the new setup and the new swing. He also gained Hinch’s trust with adept game-calling and a savvy way of handling pitchers. Behind the scenes, too, more of Kelly’s personality began to shine through.

“He was outgoing and active in our clubhouse,” Hinch said. “But I really think he settled in this spring. It was the first time I really saw him at his normal.”

Saturday against the White Sox, Kelly rewarded Detroit’s trust with two game-changing hits, a score-tying single up the middle and later a go-ahead single nearly identical to the previous hit.

“You come into spring training with a bunch of adjustments and you’re like, ‘Is it gonna work? I hope it works,’” Kelly said. “And you get validated in spring, and then to come here and have a good first day is awesome.”

Woke up with 🧹 on the mind. The #Tigers remain on schedule. @CodyStavenhagen & @Kieran_Steckley discuss the (many) good and the (some) not as good. AJ flexes, catcher power rankings, Parker Meadows leather, pizza spears and more #RepDetroit https://t.co/L3OzGCohj3

— Turning The Corner Podcast (@TurnCornerPod) April 1, 2024

By Monday, Kelly was in the Tigers’ lineup at catcher, with Rogers as the DH, a sign of the newfound strength the Tigers have in their backstop tandem.

Monday night’s game against the New York Mets was the Tigers’ fourth cardiac escapade in four games so far this season. Kelly helped starting pitcher Reese Olson pull a Houdini act to escape a rocky first inning. He then guided Olson as he settled in and cruised.

By the 10th inning, the Tigers and Mets were locked in a scoreless tie, a heavy emotional weight attached to each pitch. The thought crossed Kelly’s mind: “Man, we’re playing a 0-0 game, we’re into the ninth, we’re into the 10th,” Kelly said. “Why don’t we try something new for a change here, guys? Let’s mix it up and have more than a one-run lead.”

In the top of the 10th inning, the breaks of the game went in the Tigers’ favor once more. Colt Keith put the Tigers ahead with a ball mishandled by Joey Wendle at second base. Another run scored on a Javier Báez sacrifice fly. Then, with two runners on base, Kelly turned on a low, inside pitch and did not miss. He tossed his bat as the ball cleared the left-field fence, landing 393 feet from home plate, then pointed a finger to the sky as he rounded first base. The Tigers dugout erupted. The tension of another hard-fought game was lifted.

In dramatic fashion, the Tigers are 4-0, and a revitalized Kelly is right where he belongs.

“I think the biggest thing is that we just continue to fight,” Kelly said. “That’s a good motto to live by, is that you’re never out of it.”

(Top photo: John Jones / USA Today)