Kenley Jansen on Wednesday night became just the seventh pitcher in major league history to record 400 saves, making it the perfect time to dig into his Red Sox performance thus far.
The early returns have been simply fantastic. Jansen has been as advertised in his first season in Boston, looking even better than the closer who saved 41 games for the Braves last season. Jansen looks even more like the pitcher who finished fifth in Cy Young voting as a closer back in 2017 when he was nearly unhittable for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
With Wednesday’s save, Jansen has nine saves in 12 appearances, allowing just one run in 11 2/3 innings, while striking out 17 and walking just three. His 1.17 FIP would be the best of his career, with only that 2017 campaign (1.31) even coming close. A big reason for Boston’s early improvement this season has been that the club’s bullpen is far more dependable than in 2022, and Jansen’s presence at the back end is a big reason for that.
What makes this all even more impressive is that no one has had to adapt more to baseball’s new rules than Jansen. According to Baseball Savant, no one worked at a “slow” pace more frequently than Jansen last season. Out of 607 pitchers dating back to 2015, only four pitched with a slower tempo with the bases empty and only seven with runners on base. By any and all metrics, Jansen is one of the slowest pitchers of an entire era and certainly the most high-profile slowpoke in that time.
With MLB shocking the game’s collective system with a strict pitch clock, there were obvious questions about how players would react, and that included everyone, not just the hurlers who move at a glacial pace. The theories were obvious. Would sped-up pitchers see drop-off in velocity and stuff if they didn’t have as long to catch their breath in between pitches?
Well, it appears Jansen isn’t affected. He has, pun intended, turned back the clock. The right-hander is throwing harder than ever before. His average fastball velocity (in Jansen’s case, a cutter) is 95 mph, up 2.4 mph from last season. On Wednesday night in Atlanta, Jansen hit 99 mph on the radar gun. He also is throwing his slider harder than he ever did before. And the stuff is playing up in a big way. His fastball spin rate is in the 98th percentile among all big league pitchers, and he’s continuing his own trend of getting more vertical movement than league average on both the cutter and slider.
Amid all of this, Jansen still hasn’t been handed a pitch-timer violation.
It is something to keep an eye on as the season progresses, though, not just for Jansen but all pitchers. Might the general wear and tear of a season be accelerated because of the changes? Perhaps. But as Lou Merloni noted on the NESN telecast Wednesday night, Jansen works out like a maniac to maintain the effectiveness of his 6-foot-5, 265-pound frame.
The Red Sox took a calculated risk when they gave Jansen a two-year deal worth a reported $16 million per season. Only injured Mets star Edwin Diaz is making more per season among big league closers. But if this is the Jansen they’re going to have for the next two seasons, it will look like one of the better investments so far in the Chaim Bloom era.
