Baseball Prospectus

MLB Statistics

Statistics for All Levels

Plate Discipline

Preseason Long-Term Forecast (Beyond the 2019 Projections)

Comparable Players (Similarity Index 65)

Rank	Score	Name	Year	Run Average	Trend
1	87	Billy Wagner	2003	1.88
2	86	David Robertson	2016	3.47
3	84	Brad Lidge	2008	2.21
4	83	Bryan Harvey	1994	5.23
5	83	Tom Henke	1989	2.02
6	80	Trevor Hoffman	1999	3.07
7	77	Rafael Soriano	2011	4.12
8	77	Jose Valverde	2009	2.50
9	76	Jonathan Papelbon	2012	2.83
10	76	Rich Gossage	1983	2.78

FirstPrevious12345…10NextLast

BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2019		Due to publishing agreements, the 2019 player comments and team essays are only available in the Baseball Prospectus 2019 book (available in hardcopy, and soon e-book and Kindle).
2018		John Keats once opined that a thing of beauty is a joy forever, and he was right. When Jansen threw 20 pitches in an inning, 17 of 'em were 93-to-94-mph cut fastballs—blazing darts that hooked hard and late to the glove side and held their vertical line better than just about any other cut fastball. The pitch poured from the heaven’s brink again in 2017, one of the most dominant in all the world. But what really brought Jansen to the next level was the slider. It’s a rare pitch to be sure, but upon deployment it coaxed many more whiffs last year than it had in 2016. And when you’ve got as little room to improve as Jansen, that’s a pretty big deal. He’ll enter the second year of his five-year deal in Keats-approved fashion, full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing.
2017		Performing in a walk year, Jansen walked all over the competition. He recorded career-bests in innings pitched, ERA, WHIP, DRA- and TAv allowed. He regained a tick of lost velocity on his cutter and used it to cut swaths through the league writ large. He also showcased a newfound durability in the playoffs, going two-plus innings on more than one occasion. He'll be remembered most for his valiant efforts in Game 5 of the NLDS, entering with none out in the seventh and laboring for more than 50 pitches to cobble together seven crucial outs beore turning things over to the best pitcher on the planet. Still, it was his Game 6 performance in the NLCS that will appeal to teams in free agency. Jansen stared down a potent Cubs lineup and faced the minimum over three innings, ringing up four and barely breaking a sweat—in stark contrast to Clayton Kershaw's struggles preceding him. If he wasn't already the best reliever in baseball, becoming a multi-inning monster might just get him to the top.
2016		Despite pitching in the Golden Age of Bullpens, Jansen has never received quite as much fanfare as, say, Aroldis Chapman, Craig Kimbrel or even Andrew Miller. That's a shame, because the burly right-hander is just as good as any of them. Jansen didn't throw a pitch until May 15th last year thanks to foot surgery, but he was as dominant as ever once he returned, striking out a stupefying 40 percent of the batters he faced. Only Chapman and Miller struck out a higher percentage among pitchers with at least 40 innings, but Jansen walked fewer than either of those two southpaws. He upped his slider usage a bit in 2015, yet still relied on his cutter nearly 90 percent of the time, and despite throwing that pitch more than a mile per hour slower than he did in 2014, it did not lose its effectiveness. Jansen is slated for free agency after this season, and while he may prove to be exorbitantly expensive to most, this is the Dodgers we're talking about. He should stay in Hollywood (or Echo Park, whatever) for a long time.
2015		This is the stupidest thing to say, but Jansen's dominance as a closer practically invites stupid comparisons, in particular his dominance as a closer with one incredible pitch, in particular in particular because that pitch is a cutter, so we're just going to go ahead and say it: Through his age-26 season, Kenley Jansen has 106 saves; through his age-26 season, Mariano Rivera had five. (Warned you that it was stupid.) Anyway, it's weird that Jansen has never received even a single Cy Young vote, right? Henderson Alvarez, Francisco Liriano and Kyle Lohse have received votes in the last three years, though so have Aroldis Chapman and Craig Kimbrel, which illustrates the problem: However good Jansen is, he's "only" the third-best closer in the National League. Baseball nerd ideology says the Dodgers should let him walk to someone dumb enough to pay him after 2016 and home-grow some new closer in the meantime, but baseball nerds don't have 10-figure local media deal.
2014		Jansen continued to develop in his fourth year of education at the Mariano Rivera school for elite relievers, using his 93 mph cutter 89 percent of the time. The firehose approach gives his secondary pitches extra ambush power, so both his slider and sinker subsequently play as swing-and-miss pitches�his sinker, in fact, had baseball's highest whiff rate. Jansen has progressively honed his pitch command each year, and last year's career-low walk rate shows he has erased his only real weakness. He has no platoon disadvantage, and became hysterical in high leverage, holding batters to a .136/.176/.192 line. But perhaps the most gratifying aspect of his 2013 season was a successful recovery from offseason surgery to remedy the cardiac arrhythmia that had frighteningly disrupted his previous two seasons.
2013		Jansen couldn't match his record-setting strikeout rate from 2011, but his cutter still ranked among the game's toughest-to-hit pitches, and he remained dominant. He held batters to a .146/.230/.274 line and took over the full-time closer role from a struggling Guerra in late April. Alas, the cardiac arrhythmia that sidelined him for four weeks in 2011 resurfaced again, and he wound up spending three weeks on the DL in late August and September, a stretch during which the Dodgers' playoff hopes faded for good. After the season, he underwent a surgical ablation to correct the problem. With the Dodgers re-signing League�who took over closer chores in Jansen's absence�to an expensive and unnecessary contract, the plan is for Jansen to return to a setup role, where at least he'll be able to pitch multiple innings when the occasion dictates.
2012		The converted catcher from Cura�ao's first full season in the majors was a rocky one, at least in the early going. Hit for three homers in his first 8 2/3 innings, he carried a hefty 6.43 ERA through late May, when he went on the disabled list with shoulder inflammation. Amid injury miseries, he honed his 92-95 mph cutter into one of the game's best, and posted a 1.20 ERA without allowing a homer over his final 45 innings, with a whopping 83 strikeouts and a 4.1 K/BB ratio. If that's not eye-popping enough, consider that from the point of his first return from the DL to the end of the season, he whiffed 61 of the 120 batters he faced, holding those hitters to a .094/.192/.104 line, and wound up setting a record for the highest K rate for any season with a 50-inning minimum, topping Carlos Marmol's 2010 rate of 16.0.
2011		Formerly a light-hitting but cannon-armed catcher, this native of Cura�ao was converted to pitching in 2009 and took to it quickly, turning heads with his heat and impressive control in the Arizona Fall League. He blew hitters away at two stops last year, prompting the Dodgers to recall him in late July despite just 56 2/3 pro innings. With a mid-90s fastball, two-plane slider, and occasional changeup, he dominated big-league hitters; righties went 3-for-48 against him, lefties 9-for-44, and by year's end he was occasionally closing. Obviously, Jansen is a work in progress when it comes to refining his secondary pitches, holding runners and the like, and it remains to be seen how he will handle adversity, but the Dodgers love his work ethic. He could be part of their late-game bullpen picture out of the gate in 2011.
2010		The starting catcher on the upstart Netherlands World Baseball Classic squad, Kenley Jansen's cannon-like arm, strong physique, and light hitting (.229/.311/.337 in five seasons) prompted a conversion to the mound. His AFL stint drew raves, as he consistently reached 96-97 mph while demonstrating an improved feel for his slider.
2009		The system was already thin at catcher before Carlos Santana was traded to Cleveland in the Blake deal, but with Lucas May�s conversion going agonizingly slowly, the system�s best hope as a backstop may be this hulking Cura�ao native; like the rarely spotted giant squid, estimates of his size vary, running as high as 6-foot-5 and 245. Despite the unspectacular numbers, Jansen has tremendous raw power and a good throwing arm (catching 37 percent on attempted steals).

BP Articles

BP Chats

BP Roundtables

PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

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

Kenley Jansen has thrown 15,652 pitches that have been tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2010 and 2025, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2025, he has relied primarily on his Cutter (93mph), also mixing in a Sinker (93mph) and Slider (83mph).