April 8th, 2021 at 8:00 am 
by Ron Cervenka When you are doing good, having Dave Roberts as your manager is a good thing.
When you are doing bad, having Dave Roberts as your manager is a very good thing.
It is a very good thing that Dave Roberts is 33-year-old Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen‘s manager right now.
During Spring Training, which concluded less than two weeks ago, Jansen did good.
In the last two games prior to Thursday’s scheduled off-day, Jansen did bad. We’re talking postseason 2020 bad.
The Dodgers won Tuesday night’s game against the AL West last-place Oakland Athletics rather handily by a score of 5-1 due primarily because of the outstanding pitching of future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw and the first Hold of the season for Dodgers right-hander Blake Treinen. They did not win because of Jansen, who, although he retired three of the four batters he faced, was anything but sharp with the 18 pitches he threw that included a five-pitch walk to A’s outfielder Stephen Piscotty.
On Wednesday afternoon, Jansen was even worse, blowing his first save of the season in his third save opportunity. He made 22 pitches, of which only nine were strikes. And even though he officially did not allow the eventual game-winning run to score, he did allow the game-tying run to score, thus blowing the save and preventing the Dodgers from completing a three-game sweep of the worst them in all of baseball right now.
But Jansen’s manager is Dave Roberts.
“I just think today it was about his command. That’s just uncharacteristic for him to not have the command like that,” Roberts told reporters postgame. “There were some misfires in there, some spiked fastballs that just doesn’t usually happen with him. So, we’ll dig into it.”
Misfires indeed.
With the Dodgers leading 3-2 heading into the bottom of the ninth, Jansen gave up a leadoff single to A’s third baseman Matt Chapman, walked right fielder Seth Brown on five pitches, and surrendered a sacrifice bunt to left fielder Tony Kemp to move the runners to second and third. On his fourth pitch to Elvis Andrus, the A’s shortstop hit a sacrifice fly to Dodgers center fielder Chris Taylor, blowing the save and denying the Dodgers a series sweep.
(Video capture courtesy of SportsNet LA)
Right-hander Jimmy Nelson came in to pitch the 10th for the Dodgers and surrendered the winning run in a game that saw the Dodgers go a collective 2-for-21 with runners in scoring position and stranding 14 men on base.
“I think there’s a couple things,” Roberts said when pressed further on Jansen’s struggles. “I think that obviously the commanding of the baseball which, when you know that he’s right, he does that – there’s not balls that are thrown into the dirt or really missing a lot of leftside like that – and the characteristics of the cut fastballs. So I think that’s good, but it’s just more command the baseball like you know he can.”
Pressed even further, Roberts went full Roberts on the bad Kenley Jansen.
“This Spring he was really good so, again, I think that as far as when I talk about Spring, it’s not really about the results, it’s about what I see with my eyes as far as with Kenley in particular, it’s command the baseball and I thought he did a really good job of that this Spring, where these last two nights, it just didn’t seem like he commanded like he’s been recently.”
Huh?
As Dodger fans are coming to learn, when Jansen is down after being used in consecutive games, Nelson appears to be Roberts’ number-two closer.
He’s been worse than Jansen.
In the three games that Nelson has appeared in (out of six), the Klamath Falls, OR native and second-round draft pick in 2010 by the Milwaukee Brewers out of the University of Alabama is (now) 0-1 with a team-worst 13.50 ERA in his 2.0 innings pitched.
“With Nelson, I think, what, he’s had, three outings? So, yeah, I think he’s still trying to get his feet under him,” Roberts said of Nelson. “The curveball, fastball, sinker, cutter, slider, and, yeah, he’s just kinda gotta get it dialed in. But there is more swing and miss in there, but he’s still getting strikeouts. But I think that he’s only gonna get better.”
That would be two strikeouts to go with the four runs (three earned), three hits, and four walks he has allowed in those 2.0 innings pitched.
One can only hope that at some point soon, Roberts comes to better understand the difference between good and bad.
Play Ball!
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Posted in 
I agree Ron, Roberts seems like he doesn’t know the difference between good and bad. They seem like the same thing to him.
“Command” is usually used in reference to pitch location in, or around the strike zone. Command was not Jansen’s issue, it was horrible control. Most pitches were not even close to the strike zone — he was awful.
Roberts and his game day management remain poor.
At this point we are 5-2. Could be 7-0 easily. It’s all much a do about nothing. If Jansen pitches like this he won’t be the closer. Jimmy Nelson doesn’t turn it around he will be released. We have better options waiting in the wings.
No worries this team will win it all again.
You can measure Jansen by the speed of his fastest pitches. His minimum success speed is probably 92, which he rarely reaches when used two days in a row. Unless he had a real short outing the previous game, there is no sense in using him back to back. It’s been like this for years.
That said, he was missing all over the place in the blown save game against Oakland…and that is usually mechanical. Typically they can fix that. His ball has to move and he has to be able to throw high strikes with reasonable velocity or he will get clobbered. Velocity, control, confidence and proper use all seem to go together with Kenley.
Great insight. Thanks.