Holy crap, the Dodgers are even more terrifying.
On a night when their offense chased the opposing starter in the third inning and Clayton Kershaw picked up his 100th win of his career, the star of the show was reliever Kenley Jansen, making his season debut after undergoing foot surgery in February. He pitched a single inning, and became the 74th player in major league history to do this:
The video doesn’t show it, but Jansen only threw 14 pitches—13 of them strikes—to notch his four strikeouts. Only one batter even got a barrel on the ball:
The Dodgers bullpen has struggled lately, but Jansen’s return should solve many of those problems. His strikeouts came in the 8th inning, but manager Don Mattingly says that he’ll eventually be eased back into his closer’s role, allowing every other Dodgers reliever to slot into a less high leverage (if only in their mind) situation. They already have a five game lead in the NL West, and that’s just going to keep on growing.
E-mail or gchat the author: kevin.draper@deadspin.com | PGP key + fingerprint | Photo via AP