After pitching in four Cactus League games for the Los Angeles Dodgers, going as many as nine days between appearances at one point, Kenley Jansen could not trade in Spring Training for the 2017 World Baseball Classic fast enough.
The hard-throwing closer was included in Netherlands’ designated pitcher pool, but leading up to, and during the first round of the WBC, maintained he would not participate. Jansen softened on his stance once it became evident Netherlands was in position to potentially reach the semifinals.
Pitching at Dodger Stadium while representing his country was an opportunity Jansen ultimately could not pass on. So he entered in the ninth inning, needing to keep Puerto Rico off the board to force extra innings.
Jansen needed all of six pitches to strike out the first two batters faced. Three pitches later, Angel Pagan grounded out to the end the inning. While efficient, that was it for the Dodgers closer.
“What we had with the Dodgers was he was only going to pitch one inning in spite of how many pitches he made,” Netherlands manager Hensley Meulens explained after the elimination loss.
“He did only nine pitches, and he was excellent. What he did was excellent. But that was the deal that we had with the Dodgers. We would not use him for more than one inning, and I had to take him out.”
Jansen did place an in-game phone call to the Dodgers in effort to gain permission for another inning of work, but to no avail, according to Bill Shaikin of the L.A. Times:
He said he came off the mound and placed a call to Arizona immediately, to rouse the Dodgers’ brass from a spring training evening and ask if he could pitch one more inning, in front of his home fans, for his homeland.
“I tried, man,” Jansen said. “I was pumped up.”
Loek Van Mil got Netherlands through the 10th inning, but the international tiebreaker rule of placing runners on first and second with nobody out beginning in the 11th inning proved to tall of an order for the right-hander.
As for Jansen, he’ll rejoin the Dodgers at Camelback Ranch and is expected to appear in games later this week. He’s thrown a total of 4.1 innings this spring in live-game action, and owns an 8.10 ERA in Cactus League play.
