Weekly Update: Kenley Jansen

[samscherer]

Kenley Jansen had a better week this week than last week. While that isn’t saying much, considering how disastrously he was pitching a week ago, he’s showed some really good signs of being the pitcher who won the National League Reliever of the Month only a few weeks ago.

In Tuesday’s 3-1 win over the Padres, Jansen got the save, but it was somewhat of a high wire act. Jansen got Tatis Jr. easily to groundout to shortstop for the first out of the ninth, but the next three batters reached against him. Machado singled, Moreland singled on a pop-up to short center field (Pollock was playing way back; Jansen basically did his job here and jammed Moreland with a good cutter), and then a walk to Nola to load em up with one out. While things were looking dire, as Jansen appeared to have totally lost his command, he struck out the next two batters to nail down the win. He got Myers on 3 pitches, finishing it off with a disgusting slider that he’s throwing more often after his blown save against the Astros. It’s really a quality pitch, and the batters are never expecting it from Kenley. He then got presumptive NL Rookie of the Year Jake Cronenworth swinging on a great 3-2 cutter that was too high to hit but looks so enticing to hitters. While it’s not what we’d ideally want in a big game from the closer, there was a lot more good than bad. At the end of the day, he got it done.

Jansen also got the 9th in Saturday’s 6-1 win in Colorado, just to stay active. In short, he looked great, striking out McMahon on three pitches to start his outing and then getting Tapia (with help from a great play from Rios at 3rd base) and Story with no issues. He worked quickly, with no nonsense and total command (he was ahead in all the counts).

I expect Jansen to have maybe 3-4 outings this week before the playoffs, and I’m expecting more of the good signs that we saw this week.