Former Catcher Kenley Jansen an Early Hit as Dodgers Reliever

A year ago, Dodgers minor leaguer Kenley Jansen had a few things in common with grunts in workplaces outside of baseball.

He was struggling in a dead-end job. And when it came right down to it last July, Jansen thought his boss was a delusional kook.

The Dodgers are owned by the McKooks, who do goofy things such as pay more than $100,000 to a Russian scientist in New England to think good things about the Dodgers.

But it was farm director DeJon Watson who was talking silly to Jansen last summer after he sat the Triple-A catcher down for a chat.

Upshot was, Jansen was moving from catcher to pitcher, which wasn't surprising given Jansen's career .229 batting average and powerful right arm.

But here Watson was, telling Jansen with a straight face that he would be pitching in the major leagues in two years. Jansen nodded at his boss, only because he couldn't dare say what he was thinking.

"I was saying in my mind he was crazy," Jansen told FanHouse. "Like, he must be out of his mind."

A minor league catcher since 2004, Jansen hadn't pitched since he was a Little Leaguer who blew fastballs past smaller boys in Curacao, a baseball-loving Caribbean island off the coast of Venezuela.



Jansen was right about Watson's timetable being way off, but right for a weird reason. The former catcher needed less than a year to pitch his way from Single-A into a Dodgers uniform.

"It's just crazy," a smiling Jansen said Tuesday from the visiting clubhouse at San Diego's ballpark. "It's amazing."

The Dodgers have two exotic and imposing All-Star relievers in Jonathan Broxton, a 290-pound closer with mutton chop sideburns, and Hong-Chih Kuo, a Taiwanese left-hander with a twice-reconstructed elbow who until Thursday hadn't allowed a hit to a lefty this season.

Jansen, though, manages to stand out.

The 22-year-old is all of 6-foot-5 and 257 pounds and wears No. 74, the same address number as his childhood home in Curacao, where he still lives with his parents Ecedro and Bernadette.

Fluent in English, Dutch, Spanish and Curacao's most popular language, Papiamento, he speaks more languages (four) than his number of pitches (three).

From his massive right hand are flung high-speed fastballs that naturally swerve like cutters. Other times, his fastball reaches 99 miles per hour. Pitchers with differentiating material like that can become late-inning hammers.

It's too early to read much into what he's done for the Dodgers, but he's given three scoreless innings over three games to a team that's trying to stay in playoff contention. Doubting that the raw recruit can hit the mitt, hitters bluff bunts in attempts to rattle him, or take two or three pitches.

Jansen has responded with five strikeouts and no walks.

Explaining it all, Jansen cited a "God-given arm," Watson's faith in him and the tutelage of Charlie Hough, a former knuckleballer who is a minor league coach for the Dodgers,

Jansen recalled Hough's instructions: "Be simple, be a hard thrower, don't try to be a pitcher right now. Stay tall, and fire it."

The Dodgers unveiled their new creation last July 31 in the hitter-friendly California League, and Jansen found it no more eventful than a morning dip in Curacao's tropical waters. "It took me 10 pitches to get out of the inning," he said. "Strikeout of the first hitter, then a hit, and then two flyballs.

"From there," he said with a smile, "I was like, 'This is what I should do with my whole life.' I never looked back. Everything keeps going right ever since."

He gave out 11 walks in only 11 2/3 innings last season, but owing to 19 strikeouts and good work behind the scenes, the springboard was put into place. Jansen went onto the 40-man roster last November, opened this season in Double-A and amassed 50 strikeouts against 17 walks to earn a promotion to Los Angeles on July 22.

As the saying goes, it's harder to stay in the big leagues than to get there.

Jansen figures he has a fighting chance now that he's not tasked with hitting breaking balls and cut fastballs.

"I used to love catching, and I was thinking that I could catch in the big leagues, but my hitting couldn't be consistent," he said."Hitting is hard. I'm glad that I'm not hitting anymore."