People, please act like you’ve seen baseball before

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Is it asking so much?

Kenley Jansen’s pitching stats since June 1, going into tonight: 37 2/3 innings, 138 batters, 13 hits, four runs allowed, one home run, 12 walks, 69 strikeouts, four saves in four opportunities, 0 of 11 inherited runners scored, 0.96 ERA.

Some of the reaction on Twitter after Jansen struck out two batters, then gave up a game-tying home run tonight:

@culverfan he’s not a ninth inning guy. it’s upstairs

@DodgerBaseball2 Jansen is not a closer, not his fault Mattingly has got to stick with what works

@DRMustang22 Jansen proves again that he is not ready to be a closer. Mattingley blew it unless Javy is injured or something.

@TK0N Kenley Jansen about to be reassigned to AAA Albuquerque.

@JesRey7 Send Kenley Jansen to the minors #KeepJameyWright

@kingofbbqs Jansen blows it like the ol’ broxton days …take his ass out

Maybe Jansen didn’t have his best velocity tonight, but can people ever not overreact? Just to be clear, this was his first blown save in nearly one year.

And also to be clear, I’m not calling for Jansen to be the closer. I like that he’s not the closer. But not because I don’t think he “has it upstairs.”

  • http://twitter.com/JTDutch JTDutch

    … I’m more concerned with Jansen topping out at 91 MPH than anything else.  Wonder what the problem was (or is).

    • Anonymous

      Yeah, certainly not his best stuff.

  • http://twitter.com/MrLASportsFan Mr. LA Sports Fan

    It was also a bit disconcerting to read tweets asking why Guerra wasn’t closing.

  • http://www.chadmoriyama.com/ Chad Moriyama

    No, that would require intelligence.

  • Anonymous

    Well, as McLuhan said..

  • http://profiles.google.com/michaelgreen327 Michael Green

    Anyone who thinks like those tweeters knows nothing about baseball.

  • http://www.twitter.com/ElJefedor Jeffrey Thomas III

    Game-tying homerun*

    • http://www.dodgerthoughts.com/ Jon Weisman

      Fixed, thanks. 

  • John Manovich

    Thank you for posting this, I can’t believe people sometimes.

  • Eric Lyman

    Jon, I think a Vin quote is appropriate in this instance (and horribly paraphrased)… “The fans are calling strikes more with their hearts than with their heads”

    Fans say stuff based more on emotion than logic and your quoted tweets are evidence of this.  Jansen has been lights out since last June.  His WHIP is below 1, his ERA is as well (tonight might jack that up, but whatever) .  Kenley is pretty darned good.

    Just ignore these follks.. they can’t help it.  They don’t have any basis for their emotions other than tonight’s game.  They can’t process much more than that

  • http://underdog.typepad.com/ underdog

    Can we trust that radar gun btw? Seemed a bit zippier than that at least.  
    At any rate, what keeps me from worrying too much about the Curacao Kid is that he also had similar issues last April, and as Jon notes, turned out okay.

    • Anonymous

      but not until June.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_U3DPMRWHEJOLO4JUFORAC5VFLI Josh

       I thought that too, but the very next half inning it had Cashner up to 100 MPH.

  • http://underdog.typepad.com/ underdog

    Actually, except for one bad game vs. Houston (!) he was pretty solid in May, too.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Gobias-Bluth/100001890059228 Gobias Bluth

    Those tweets are ridiculous. Pay no mind.

  • Anonymous

    Maybe he injured his clutchiness.