Much of the baseball fans in the eastern and central time zones woke up to seeing Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen had blown another save. This time it came against the Padres and he really should have lost the game. First up, Eric Hosmer went yard: 

That's a 90 mile-per-hour cutter that was pretty flat and that's a problem. That sucker needs to be in the 93-94 range without more movement. That one just looked like a BP fastball, really. A professional hitter like Hosmer isn't going to miss that. Fast-forward to one out later and Christian Villenueva got a 92-mph cutter than ran a little more. Still: 

After that, Jansen started hitting 94 regularly, but lost all command. Was he overthrowing due to them squaring him up? That's generally what causes an increase in velocity with a loss in command. After the game, Jansen didn't have any answers. He appeared to kind of be talking himself into being confident. Via latimes.com: 

"People can criticize you," Jansen said. "Everyone can criticize you. That's OK. They deserve to criticize me. But for me, I just have to be strong in my mind and know who I am. I've done this for a long time now. I've just got to have that confidence when I go out there and continue to battle."

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"I'm going to figure it out," Jansen said. "I know who I am. I know deep down inside who I am."

In that same article, it was mentioned that Jansen will meet with pitching coach Rick Honeycutt on Wednesday to discuss his mechanics, which have reportedly been out of whack since he had a hamstring issue in spring training. Speaking of which, the Dodgers held Jansen back in a big way in spring training after such a hefty postseason workload in 2017. That could be part of the problem, too. 

Otherwise, I'm as lost as Jansen is. One could say last year's stat-line was not repeatable, but Jansen's been a monster for his entire career. Let's take a look. 

Year(s)

ERA

FIP

WHIP

IP

K/BB

H/9

2013-16 average per season

2.19

1.86

0.86

66

99/14

5.9

2017

1.32

1.31

0.75

68 1/3

109/7

5.8

The 109 to seven K:BB rate sounds ridiculous and unsustainable, but it was 104 to 11 the year before. 

Jansen is 30 years old with just 483 2/3 innings of regular-season wear on his arm. There's no reason to think he's hit some sort of wall and is hitting his decline. He shouldn't even be close to that phase. 

And yet, here we are with the 8.10 ERA, 1.65 WHIP and two blown saves along with a loss. He only had one blown save -- and zero losses! -- last season. He's already allowed three home runs (it could be four, too) when he only gave up five all of last season. He's already walked three when he only walked seven last year. He also balked on Tuesday night, by the way, matching his total from all of last year. Basically, everything is bad and, again, he shouldn't be in a decline phase. 

So what gives? 

The best guess is Jansen just isn't right due to the weird spring training and possibly a bit of a carry-over from so much postseason use the last few years, with last season's going through six of the seven World Series games, including each of the last four. If this is true, we can expect Jansen to return to form at some point. The bad news for the Dodgers and those who have Jansen in fantasy baseball: It might not be for a while. It might not even be until next year. The good news? This could be it. It's a small sample and Jansen could get right before his next outing and be himself the rest of the year. It's baseball, people. Time will tell. Stay tuned.