Kenley Jansen Is Too Busy Helping The Dodgers Win To Get Saves

Dodger closer Kenley Jansen has had a lights-out first half with a 4-0 record, a 0.96 ERA, 57 strikeouts and just two walks allowed in 37.2 innings pitched.

He also has only 21 saves, which ranks seventh in the league through the All-Star break. But Jansen has been considerably more valuable to the Dodgers than those save numbers imply. That’s because Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has been deploying Jansen in high-leverage situations that other managers often shield their closers from. Jansen has made 10 multi-inning appearances so far this year. He’s been brought into the game with runners on base nine times. And he’s entered in tied games in eight appearances. l call all of these “firemen appearances” because they resemble how teams used their top relievers in the era a few decades ago when the best relievers were referred to as “firemen” instead of closers.

These firemen appearances have not necessarily helped Jansen earn saves; a pitcher can’t earn a save when he enters in a tied game, for instance. But they do provide opportunities for him to earn goose eggs, the new relief-pitcher statistic that we developed this spring. (The short version: A pitcher gets a goose egg for a clutch, scoreless relief inning, including in a tied game.) Jansen has 25 goose eggs, which ties him for third this season. He and his fellow goose-egg leaders — including the Pirates’ Felipe Rivero, who leads MLB with 27 — are routinely making firemen appearances:

We shouldn’t get too carried away here. With the possible exception of the Astros’ Chris Devenski — who leads the majors with 52.2 relief innings but whose effectiveness has diminished as the season has worn on — none of these pitchers are being used in the Goose Gossage mold of the 1970s, when star relievers often threw 100 or more innings in a season. This is particularly true for Jansen, whose workload has always been managed carefully. (He’s on pace for only 68 innings this year.) But if teams are still using pitchers such as Jansen, Rivero and the Indians’ Andrew Miller for only 60 to 80 innings a season, they’re increasingly picking the right innings for them to pitch. By contrast, closers such as the Rockies’ Greg Holland and the Twins’ Brandon Kintzler have rarely made fireman appearances but have often been used to close out big, relatively safe leads. Although they have more saves than pitchers like Jansen and Rivero, Holland and Kintzler have fewer goose eggs and have provided less overall value to their clubs.

The Dodgers have managed Jansen’s opportunities smartly, but he also deserves credit for making the most of every one of them — literally. Jansen has 25 goose eggs on the season, but no broken eggs, our term for when a pitcher enters the game with an opportunity to earn a goose egg but is charged with at least one earned run instead.¹ The record for most goose eggs in a season without a broken egg is held by Brad Lidge, who had 34 goose eggs and no broken eggs in 2008.

As a result of this perfect conversion rate, Jansen leads baseball with 3.6 goose wins above replacement (GWAR) and is on pace for 6.5 GWAR, which would make for one of the top half-dozen relief pitching seasons of all time. Rivero and Miller are second and third in GWAR this season. You can find goose-egg statistics for these and all other relief pitchers in the sortable table below.

Check out our latest MLB predictions.