During an interview before his first official bullpen session of the spring on Wednesday morning, Dodgers star closer Kenley Jansen kidded with reporters about how the media has portrayed him as somewhat of a rabble-rouser over labor issues between the MLB Players Association and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. But within a heartbeat, the normally soft-spoken 6′-5″ / 275-pound gentle giant became very passionate – almost incensed – when asked about MLB’s plan to institute the use of a pitch clock to improve the pace of play; perhaps even as early as this spring training.

“That’s ridiculous, man. Football is four hours, four and a half hours, the Super Bowl is five hours,” Jansen said. “Listen, man, baseball fans are not going to stop watching the game because the game is too long, that’s less … let’s stop that from there. I feel that’s ridiculous, and to me, man, it’s…

“Sometimes you just don’t want to put it on the organization, sometimes it’s about… How many pitchers command three, two pitches, like relief guys? You know, you can put all these clocks, but if pitchers cannot command some pitches… ”

“You know, I can say that from my experience that I had a blessed pitch that I got rushed to the big leagues and I had that blessing that I had a cutter. But I developed my slider here in the big leagues,” added Jansen. “But there’s a lot of guys out there, too, that [can’t] command the secondary pitch, so the game’s going to be long. You’re going to get two quick outs and then walk two… three hitters, the game’s still going to be long. All this stuff they want to do, it’s not going to get caught up, so I don’t believe in that.”

Jansen made it perfectly clear that he is very much opposed to bringing a pitch clock into major league baseball, calling it “ridiculous.” (Video capture courtesy of SportsNet LA)

But regardless of what Kenley’s or any of our own respective opinions on the topic might be, is the two-time National League All-Star and two-time Trevor Hoffman NL Reliever of the Year prepared for the change if – and more likely when – it happens?

“To me, at some point it’s got to end at some point, right? So we’ll see and go from there. But I think it’s just… [that] stuff is just ridiculous. The game’s still going to be long,” Jansen said.

Like I said … passionate.