Kenley Jansen is the Dodgers Best Reliever
By Kyle Davis
Buster Olney is a guy in the know. He knows things. He knows people. He knows people who tell him things. In the most simple of senses, this is why he’s a big important ESPN baseball writer—not only is he very knowlegable about the sport of baseball, but he has also cultivated and formed many relationships within the game, relationships that afford him a lot of information he then passes on to baseball weirdos like you and I. And we eat that S up, don’t we?
All this is to say that Buster Olney tweeted something today that got me thinking about the Los Angeles Dodgers bullpen situation, and since we’ve now established that Buster may have a connection or two, and isn’t a guy who completely makes stuff up, we can now take the content of that tweet somewhat seriously and talk abut it. He tweeted this:
"Javy Guerra is probably the frontrunner to be the LAD closer at the start of the season, but Kenley Jansen is a possibility."
The Dodgers “official” depth chart seems to agree with Buster. So there’s also that. And what to make of it? Before I make good on the title of the post and use the wonder of baseball statistics to show that Kenley Jansen is the better relief pitcher, there does exist an intriguing possibility that probably isn’t actually happening here, but let’s consider it anyway, if only for a moment. We might assume that the Dodgers know Kenley Jansen is in fact their best reliever, and having seen the light in regards to proper relief pitcher utilization, are deftly keeping him in a setup role as to deploy him during any given inning when the leverage and consequence is at its highest. That would be exciting and wonderful, but given that the Dodgers are the very same organization that saw it necessary to get all redundant and acquire all of Mark Ellis and Adam Kennedy and Jerry Hairston Jr. this offseason, I’m having a hard time buying the theory.
No, it’s unfortunately more probable that the Dodgers are leaning a bit too much on balmy things like ERA, and Experience, and Closers Mentality when deciding that Javy Guerra is their ninth inning man over Jansen. These things happen. The numbers just don’t agree much with the assessment. While that pesky Earned Run Average favors Guerra over Jansen last season 2.31 to 2.85, that and a handful less walks are about the only thing working in Javy’s favor. Defense Independent statistics show Jansen to be the more effective pitcher—his FIP of 1.74 and xFIP of 2.09 dominating Guerra’s numbers of 3.30 and 4.07. Jansen’s record breaking and utterly ridiculous strikeout rate of 16.1 also easily doubles Guerra’s admittedly respectable 7.33. The truth is that Guerra was probably a bit fortunate that more contact didn’t fall for hits last season, as his BABIP of .261 is due to regress more towards the 2011 league average of .290 or so (Jansen submitted a mark of .297). Fangraphs WAR pegs Guerra as a replacement level pitcher in 2011, earning a pedestrian mark of 0.4. Jansen only needed seven more innings to earn 1.5. Both pitchers were perhaps a bit short on innings when compared to league average, and given a full season to work with, the gap could grow even larger.
Like I said, it would be super cool if the Dodgers bought into all of this, recognized Jansen as the better pitcher, and are planning on going all Red Sox and Daniel Bard with the former catcher turned strikeout machine. There’s no doubt that the Dodgers probably employ a person or two who would recommend such an arrangement, but it remains to be seen if anyone would listen and agree enough to make sure it happened. Jansen’s agent probably wouldn’t appreciate it, but doing so would help the Dodgers win more games. Jansen’s agent would be all Hey, not cool, Dodgers! My guy needs to get the big Saves so he can get the big paychecks! He’s your best reliever, so give him the ninth! and the Dodgers would be all We’re sorry, we don’t know what you’re talking about. Kenley is pretty good, but he’s new to this whole pitching thing and he’d probably get way too nervous pitching in a different inning, and besides, Javy had the better 2011 ERA. That actually wouldn’t happen at all—they’d definitely talk to each other in a way more professional manner and with a lot less ironic exclamation points, but you get the gist. It would be pretty hilarious if, despite improperly evaluating their own pitching talent, the Dodgers somehow lucked in to using Jansen the way he should be used. They could spend the whole season deploying him in the most critical of situations and reap the benefits of his superior talent getting the most important outs of many baseball games without even completely appreciating their own misguided fortune. That, or he’ll dominate early in the season and take over the closer role after the team overreacts to a couple blown Guerra save attempts. Either one.
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Kyle writes baseball nonsense at The Trance of Waiting. You can follow him on Twitter @AgainstKyle.