Tag: Kenley Jansen

Red Sox fans were thrilled that Rafael Devers and Kenley Jansen publicly called out the team’s front office

The Red Sox front office is a MESS.

When the Boston Red Sox signed closer Kenley Jansen last offseason and reached a long-term extension with Rafael Devers, the two players had the expectation that the Red Sox were looking to compete immediately in a stacked AL East.

But a last-place finish in 2023 and a quiet offseason in 2024 signaled that the Red Sox are shifting into a rebuilding mode. Needless to say, both Jansen and Devers aren’t thrilled with what they’ve seen from John Henry, Craig Breslow and the rest of the front office.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday with an interpreter, Devers expressed his frustration with the front office. He wondered why the team isn’t doing more to address their needs.

Devers said:

“Everybody knows what we need. And they know what we need. It’s just some things that I can’t say. … Everybody in the organization that knows the game knows what we need.”

Jansen also had similar remarks on a podcast, saying that he almost felt deceived by the team’s vision when he joined Boston from the Braves. Via SI.com:

“I definitely feel frustrated,” Red Sox closer Kenley Jansen said on the “Baseball Isn’t Boring” podcast. “I came here for two years where Year 1 we were going to compete but by Year 2 they were really going to go for it… They have a different vision now. I get it. It’s part of the business but at the same time I have one more year left here and I’m going to give the fans the best that I have.”

That frustration is certainly echoed by Red Sox fans, and they were happy to see two clubhouse leaders call out the front office.

10 pitchers (including Josh Hader) whose tempos were most affected by the new pitch clock in 2023

Giovanny Gallegos is averaging nearly nine seconds less per pitch!

After years of speculation, the MLB officially began to implement a pitch clock for this season.

Pitchers are only allowed 15 seconds between pitches when the bases are empty and 20 seconds when runners are on base and the games are much faster.

Last season, we predicted ten pitchers who would likely become most impacted by the rule change. This season, using the pitch tempo data provided by Statcast, we were able to track which players have seen the biggest dips in their tempo on the mound. Here is how it works:

“Pitch tempo measures the median time between pitches (in other words pitch release to pitch release). Only pitches that follow a take (called strike or called ball) and are thrown to the same batter are considered for this metric.”

Note that this timer adds about six seconds more than the actual pitch timer used by umpires.

Using this data, meanwhile, we were able to determine which pitchers are operating at a faster tempo between each pitch while on the mound.

While we cannot assess that correlation equals causation, we also compared the expected weighted on-base average for each pitcher to track their year-over-year progress or regression.

This is why we chose that particular metric for evaluation (via MLB.com):

“xwOBA is more indicative of a player’s skill than regular wOBA, as xwOBA removes defense from the equation. Hitters, and likewise pitchers, are able to influence exit velocity and launch angle but have no control over what happens to a batted ball once it is put into play.”

Here are the ten players whose pitch tempo has been most impacted by the pitch clock rule change. The number next to each name indicates how much shorter the tempo is between each pitch for the player compared to last year.

RELATED: What are the MLB pitch clock rules? Breaking down the details, violations and more

Kenley Jansen blew another save to ruin an epic Braves comeback and Brian Snitker still defended him

It doesn’t make sense.

It was easy to miss amid all the Week 1 NFL action, but the Atlanta Braves and Seattle Mariners played one of the wilder games of the MLB season on Sunday.

With the Braves trailing by four runs and down to their final strike, Atlanta had a five-run, two-out rally to astonishingly take the lead on the Mariners in the ninth. They just needed closer Kenley Jansen to pitch a clean bottom half to leave Seattle with an improbable series win.

Jansen would give Atlanta anything but that.

After getting the first out in the ninth, Jansen gave up a pair of home runs — one to Julio Rodriguez and a walk-off shot to Eugenio Suarez — as the Mariners escaped with an 8-7 win.

Now, the Braves acquired Kenley Jansen in the offseason because they believed that the longtime Dodgers closer had the ability to take Atlanta’s bullpen to the next level. They demoted Will Smith to a set-up role before trading him at the deadline, but as Jansen started to struggle, the acquisition of Raisel Iglesias seemed to signal uncertainty about Jansen.

You just wouldn’t pick up on that notion by hearing what manager Brian Snitker had to say after the game.

When asked about Jansen’s latest blown save, Snitker defended his closer and pointed out that Jansen leads the league in saves. And sure, Jansen does lead the league in saves — he’s also second in blown saves.

But just like pitcher win-loss record, that stat can be deceptive as Jansen has still allowed runs in seven of those saves. The fact is that in Jansen’s past seven appearances, he has an 11.12 ERA with three homers and seven earned runs allowed. He’s blown three saves in that span and appears to be getting worse with each appearance.

In a pennant race with the now-NL East-leading New York Mets, a dependable closer is key. So while Snitker wasn’t going to throw Jansen under the bus to the media, Braves fans were still frustrated with the latest defense of Jansen.

10 pitchers with the slowest tempos who could be most affected by the MLB’s new pitch clock in 2023

These guys are going to have to speed it up!

After years of speculation, the MLB will officially begin to implement a pitch clock beginning next season.

According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, pitchers will only be allowed 15 seconds between pitches when the bases are empty (the MLB average is currently at 18.2 seconds) and 20 seconds when runners are on base (the current average is 23.8 seconds).

This rule is expected to make the games faster, which is a good thing.

Using the pitch tempo data provided by Statcast, I found the pitchers most likely to be impacted by the new rule. It is particularly interesting to note that relievers dominated this list.

If we looked at the players who have thrown at least 750 pitches this season, however, the names that would top the list would look very different. They would include Shohei Ohtani (Angels), Luis Garcia (Astros), Paul Blackburn (A’s), Corbin Burnes (Brewers), and Josiah Gray (Nationals).

Otherwise, however, these are the players who use the most time between pitches in the MLB:

Where Mets’ Edwin Diaz’s amazin’ entrance music ranks on the top all-time best MLB closer entrance songs

Is there anything better than Mr. Met playing the trumpet?

New York Mets closer Edwin Diaz has legitimately become one of the most popular players in baseball this week, and it’s all because of a song.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you probably haven’t spent much time on Twitter. Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. Here is everything you need to know about “Narco” by Blasterjaxx and Timmy Trumpet — which is the epic song Diaz uses as he trots to the pitcher’s mound at Citi Field.

As we recently wrote, Diaz’s tremendous bullpen entrance is exactly what the MLB needs right now. The recent video of the closer coming into the game for the Mets at Citi Field on Sunday went viral, and a couple recently used it as the walk-out song at their wedding to honor Diaz.

The recent hype for Diaz got us thinking: Where does this rank among the best entrances for relief pitchers in MLB history? How does it stack up with “Hells Bells” for Trevor Hoffman and “Enter Sandman” for Mariano Rivera?

Note that songs were excluded if it wasn’t from an actual MLB pitcher (so no “Wild Thing” from the “Major League” movie) or if there was no video that I could find (no “Bad To The Bone” for Dennis Eckersley or Goose Gossage).

Otherwise, this is how I rank the best walkout songs in baseball history:

Dodgers’ Kenley Jansen threw an absurd 95-MPH cutter with so much movement

WOW.

We’ve shared pitches with you both extremely slow and then extremely fast with crazy movement.

Today, we bring you the latter: Los Angeles Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen, who continues to be dominant after years of success on the mound saving games for the franchise.

This is a cutter that goes 95 MPH, but what’s wild about it is how far it darts off the plate to the righty Seattle Mariners hitter. Anybody would have trouble figuring out what to do with this pitch.

And it was so good that fellow reliever, the New York Mets’ Trevor May, was in awe of it:

Whew. What a pitch. And as Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) pointed out, it’s not the first time we’ve seen a pitch like this from Jansen with that much movement:

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Kenley Jansen is justifiably getting blamed for not backing up catcher on wild end to Game 4

That can’t happen.

There was so much to unpack from the wild, exhilaratingly hectic end to Saturday’s Game 4 of the World Series between the Dodgers and Rays.

In one play, we had a clutch two-strike hit, a bobble in the outfield, a nicely executed cutoff, a wipeout 45 feet from home plate, a catcher failing to catch and that same player who wiped out diving head-first into home for the win. That grammatically questionable sentence aside, the entire sequence was beautiful. It was the kind of edge-of-your-seat chaos that October baseball is all about.

But still, despite all that Dodgers calamity in the buildup to Randy Arozarena’s triumphant dive into home, the Dodgers should not have lost that game right there. All Dodgers pitcher Kenley Jansen had to do was execute the positional responsibility that he has practiced countless times in spring training:

Backing up the dang catcher!

Just watch Jansen here:

When all that mayhem was unfolding, Jansen dropped to his knees out of frustration. And once he got back to his feet, he slowly walked towards the third-base line to watch the play like a spectator. He should have, however, sprinted to back up catcher Will Smith because he knew there was going to be a play at the plate.

Arozarena wasn’t even in the picture yet when Max Muncy made his throw to home. Like, Arozarena was done.

But you’ll also see that Jansen was standing off to the side instead of backing up Smith. So, when Smith missed the throw, Arozarena was able to get up and dive safely into home without a play because Jansen was ball-watching.

Worst of all: Jansen has made this mistake before. The Dodgers lost to the Angels in 2018 because Jansen didn’t back up the catcher. He still hasn’t learned.

And when the Dodgers pitcher was asked about why he didn’t back up the catcher, he gave an answer with real “At the end of the day, we’re all gonna die“ energy.

And sure, this wasn’t all on Jansen. Chris Taylor booted the ball. Will Smith missed a throw. But Jansen should have been the last line of defense, and he went missing.

That justifiably won’t sit well with Dodgers fans.

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