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BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2012		Jenks's disappointing biceps strain doesn't sound so bad when you consider what he has been through since the season ended. He underwent off-season surgery to repair a calcified ligament causing nerve damage in his spine. The ligament was discovered while treating Jenks for colitis, but surgery could not be performed immediately thanks to a pulmonary embolism in Jenks's lungs. Thankfully, Jenks is expected to be healthy and ready to go in the spring. Assuming he is indeed the Jenks of old, with the way the closer market exploded this past winter, his two-year, $12 million contract all of a sudden looks fantastic even with the lost season in mind.
2011		There comes a point where a high-maintenance relationship is no longer worth the time required to keep it going. Jenks has slowly become that kind of guy, especially after a 2010 season in which he struggled with calf, back, and forearm injuries, the last ending his season a month early and scotching a bid for 30 saves. The main positives are that he still throws hard, and that he got his strikeout and his ground-ball rates back up where they'd been during his early-career glory years. If you want to believe that the BABIP fairy will smile on him while he keeps his strikeout rate up, you're probably also willing to keep waiting for that initial magic to come back, too. Having spent as much time as they have waiting for it, the Sox could be forgiven their decision to non-tender Jenks a year before free agency.
2010		The offseason on the South Side had plenty of drama before the postseason even ended, as Jenks and general manager Kenny Williams traded barbs about what went wrong in 2009, with Williams pointing the finger at Jenks' bulging waistline. While this was possibly some politicking for what could be an acrimonious arbitration hearing, the White Sox don't necessarily need that much ammo—Jenks clearly isn't the pitcher he was as recently as two years ago. Neither radar guns (nor scales) lie, and what was once a 96-98 mph fastball that could touch 100 is now 92-95, making Jenks, on a pure stuff level, more of a set-up man.
2009		Jenks' maturation has been fascinating to watch, as he’s followed an unusual path. Once a wild, fire-balling starter, he’s turned into a contact-pitching closer who doesn’t hurt himself with walks and gets his opponents to pound his heater into the ground. Over the past two seasons, Jenks has allowed just five homers and walked just 30 men in 126 2/3 innings, while striking out just 6.7 men per nine frames despite his high-90s heat. Jenks missed three weeks in July with scapula bursitis and had a rough September, but still finished eighth in the majors in WXRL.
2008		The Human Barrel was the one effective member of the Sox's pen last year, as Jenks silenced doubters with his best year yet, in no small part because of his record-tying 41 straight batters retired (joining 1970s Giants starter Jim Barr at the head of the class). Remove those 41 consecutive outs from his record, and his season line was a still-dominant .242/.291/.301. The secret to his success was that he started putting his fastball in the zone with much more regularity. That meant both fewer walks and fewer strikeouts, but it's was a worthwhile tradeoff as it's almost impossible to catch up with and pull his heater. It might not be beyond the realm of possibility for him to improve yet again this year; he was raw when he first got to the Sox in 2005, after all, and he's really only just putting everything together.
2007		Perhaps the biggest indication of how far Bobby Jenks has come is that his 2006 season was a little . . . boring. His ERA was somewhat higher than expected, but the save total and peripherals were spot on. He slumped in July and again in September, but there was no sign of a mental or physical breakdown. Jenks will never move into the Rivera-Wagner-Hoffman class of relievers without some radical improvement to his command, but he significantly improved his ground ball rate last season, which helps keep those walks from doing damage via three-run homers. He should remain a good closer, provided one remembers that `good` in this division and this ballpark can mean a 3.60 ERA.
2006		The curious case of Bobby Jenks can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. Forget the checkered personal history, the postseason heroics, the beer gut, the at-bat that might be responsible for Jeff Bagwell`s retirement. The bottom line is this: if Jenks can keep his walk rate below four walks per nine, he`ll succeed, and if he can`t, he won`t. He was just above that threshold in Birmingham last year, and just below it in Chicago. A purely statistical projection isn`t of much help here. To the extent that ballplayers have personal issues, 90 percent of them boil down to self-confidence, and it`s hard to imagine a bigger confidence boost than getting the last out of the World Series. Ozzie Guillen is also a big piece of the puzzle. When Scott Podsednik hit his walk-off to win Game 2 against the Astros, Guillen`s first instinct was not to congratulate Pods, but to find Jenks in the crowd and to make sure that he was doing okay after blowing the save earlier. Almost inevitably, there will be moments that require the same finesse and compassion next season, and Guillen, who makes no pretension of being a perfect man, is the right manager to provide it.
2005		Taking up space on the 40-man roster like a car that's been booted, Jenks missed most of the season with a "stress reaction," the precursor to a stress fracture. It's the second time he's been shelved for this reason, and pins have been inserted into his elbow in hopes that these will hold it together. As in the old TMBG song, Jenks throws sapphire bullets of pure love, topping 102 mph in winter ball. Unfortunately, the speed is as untamed, as 6.2 walks per nine attest. He looked great at Double-A Arkansas in 2003, but he now has three hurdles—personality/maturity, health and control—to jump before he can have a notable major league career. Those are long odds. Claimed on waivers by the White Sox, who haven't had a lot of success turning minor league projects into major league pitchers in recent years. The odds just got longer.
2004		You can look at Jenks's checkered personal history as either proof that he's a head case not worthy of the risk, or evidence that he's capable of addressing his demons, and therefore someone of strong character. While skepticism that he's put his problems with alcohol and temperament completely behind him is warranted, Jenks's 2003 performance at Arkansas was the kind of dominant work that cannot be ignored. His overpowering fastball marks him as a candidate for the major league bullpen, perhaps as soon as this summer.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, Bobby Jenks threw 3,358 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2007 and 2011, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2011, he relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (95mph) and Slider (87mph), also mixing in a Change (85mph). He also rarely threw a Sinker (93mph) and Curve (83mph).