Kenley Jansen was not looking for change. He had achieved an almost impossible situation in modern sport – stability – and was grateful he had held onto it for so long. For 17 years, half his life, he was in the organization of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He’d spent twelve of those years in the majors. He had become the franchise’s all-time save leader. He had a beautiful home near the Pacific Ocean where he lived with his beautiful wife and their four children. He had a regular seat alongside Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss whenever he felt like an NBA game. Even the three-story playhouse he built in his backyard was idyllic.
“If you ask about the Dodgers, that was family to me,” Jansen said. “That’s all I knew. That’s all I’ve known in baseball my entire life. I am so grateful to them for everything they have done in my life. They signed that kid, and that kid became a man. A man, a husband and father of four children.”
This offseason, his plan was to re-sign with the Dodgers once the lockout ended.
“That was option A,” said Jansen.
That was the Dodgers’ plan, too.
“We have a lot of respect for Kenley as a person, Kenley as a competitor, and getting in was a priority for us offseason,” said Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations. “It was a priority for us to get into the off-season to keep him.”
1 relatives
By all accounts, the Dodgers were really trying to keep him and he was really trying to come back.
It just didn’t happen. He wanted a three-year contract; the Dodgers preferred one or two. The sides kept talking, but the math got more complicated after the Dodgers signed Freddie Freeman — since they sat so close to the luxury tax, they had to lose salary through a trade before they could offer Jansen the kind of deal they were after he searched . There was already time pressure due to reduced agency after the lockout, and Jansen began to worry that he would lose offers from other teams while waiting for the Dodgers.
Then along came defending World Series champion Atlanta Braves, the team he grew up with in Curacao as a kid, with a rich $16 million one-year offer that needed a quick response.
The pressure built up – and Jansen began to think about option B for the first time. Taking a deep breath as he had done thousands of times on the hill, he consulted with his wife Gianni and made the decision to continue and hopefully move forward.
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“It was a very emotional farewell,” said Jansen. “Very emotional. But sometimes, when opportunities come up in your life, you have to take them, otherwise you always wonder what would have happened. Because those opportunities don’t always come back.”
There was sadness everywhere as he announced to his teammates and coaches that he was leaving. He cried in conversation with Justin Turner and Clayton Kershaw. And he’s pretty sure he’ll be emotional on his return to Dodger Stadium on Monday when the Braves are in town for a three-game series in LA starting Monday.
But if there was one team he could feel good about leaving the Dodgers for, it was the Braves.
“I remember growing up in Curacao at the age of five and watching the Twins and the Braves in the 1992 World Series,” said Jansen. “I was a big fan of Fred McGriff, Andruw Jones, David Justice, Sid Bream, I can always name people. We had the TBS Superstation!
“So I don’t want to take that for granted. Every day that I’m here in this uniform I’ll enjoy it and when it’s that time again hopefully we’ll win another championship here this year.”
Jansen was excited too – for the first time in almost two decades he was facing a new challenge in a new place.
“It’s like going back to your early days when you first got into the big leagues,” he said.
At this point in history, it’s worth going back and remembering what Jansen’s early days in the big leagues were like. The year was 2010 and he was 21. Less than a year earlier he had stepped into Charlie Hough’s bullpen in Class A in San Bernardino, California to see if his right arm had enough talent for the minor league Dodgers coach took the trouble to teach him how to pitch. After five seasons with the minors, most reviewers had concluded he would never be more than a light-hitting catcher. But there was something about the way he threw the ball to second base when someone tried to steal.
“He would get on his left knee and throw it harder than our pitcher in second,” Hough said in 2010.
The original plan didn’t work out. But the Dodgers presented an alternative: learn to pitch and stick with it. If he was open to change, the Dodgers were willing to give him a chance to grow.
“That was hard for me too,” said Jansen. “I didn’t want to be a pitcher. I was a catcher.
More than 350 saves, two Trevor Hoffman Awards for Baseball’s Best Assistant, three All-Star appearances and a World Series title later, that change seems to have worked well for everyone.
“For so long,” Jansen said, “it’s been like that, when I’m in the game it’s basically like that. ‘Turn off the light, we can go home. Take off your cleats, everyone takes off their gloves, you put on ‘don’t have to do anything.'”
But a series of heart problems, combined with a decade of finals in the big leagues, took their toll. Jansen had started his career more as a pitcher, blessed with an effortless throw and a right arm that regularly hit 100 mph. For a time, his clipped fastball was one of the most devastating pitches in the majors.
As of 2018, he was still an elite closer, but he had to work harder to get out. He couldn’t just blow bats away anymore. He had to set them up with a choice of pitches instead of relying on the editor.
“His growth as a pitcher has been really impressive to see firsthand,” Friedman said. “He was so dominant after he switched to pitching, and as he got older he really had to push himself to keep developing different pitches and becoming more of a pitcher. It’s been really fun to watch this development and it speaks volumes about who he is as a person and as a competitor.”
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Around the same time, Jansen experienced an irregular heartbeat during a four-game series in Colorado. He was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation in 2011 and had surgery in October 2012 which appeared to have largely resolved the problem. But after it resurfaced in 2018, he underwent a nearly six-hour surgical procedure during the offseason. The recovery was intense. For months, Jansen could not lift weights or train as usual. He’s also had to drastically alter his diet – a change that has benefited his overall health but set the stage for a bad 2019.
Jansen still had 33 saves this year, but his ERA was a career-high 3.71.
“I came out [in spring training] throwing 88-89,” he said. “It messed with my mind.”
He knew he would regain his speed and power if he could practice off-season as usual, but he also knew he needed to evolve his approach to throwing – both on and off the mound. He began working with a sports psychologist to help process everything he’d been through the previous season: the boos from home fans at Dodger Stadium. The loss of invincibility he felt as his speed and strength diminished. He’s never had a problem with the pressure to finish big games, but he’s also never had to close without his best stuff.
His wife suggested he learn a new skill to take his mind off baseball from time to time. So he decided to try piano lessons at Torrance Arts Academy.
In the beginning it was fun and escape. But soon there were many more.
“It helped me enormously,” said Jansen. “It helped me to think more clearly, because when you’re dealing with music, you can’t get distracted.”
He bought a Steinway and started practicing at home, even recording his sessions for later study – just like he does as a pitcher. The next year, stuck at home during the pandemic, he decided to learn bass guitar and is similarly obsessed.
“It helps me a lot mentally to focus better,” he said. “Thoughts can be very tricky. You must learn to defeat them. When I play music, you fight it — you don’t think about it because you’re so focused on what you’re doing, ‘Right here, right now.’ And that’s what keeps me from “right here and now” at this moment.
“So when I go jogging outside, I’m going to be ‘right here, now.’ how can i run better How can I push myself better? When it comes to the ninth inning or which inning you want me to say, it’s right here, now. That’s all that counts.”
He has repeated this mantra to himself many times over the past few days. After a rocky debut in Atlanta — Jansen gave up three runs in the ninth even though the Braves still won 7-6 — Jansen has since played three scoreless innings, including two saves against the Padres. He’s repeating it more often this week, knowing his return to Dodger Stadium is imminent.
The emotion will come and he will allow it.
If the Braves have a lead that goes into the bottom of the ninth, he’ll run out of the visiting bullpen and onto the mound. In a way, it will feel the same. In others it will be completely alien. No song is played as he jogs to the hill after listening to “California Love” for 12 years.
But Jansen has embraced enough changes in his career to understand that the best thing to do in those moments is to stay as present and open in them as possible. Not sitting in what could or should have been – instead living with what was, embracing the new and seeing where this path will take him. Maybe this change should be like that.
“Let’s see how it feels,” he said. “I’m just going to try and focus on being ‘right here, right now.'”