Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis was recovering from knee surgery Tuesday night, watching the duel from home.

“Two guys going at each other,” Ellis said. “That’s what baseball is all about.”

At Dodger Stadium, Tim Federowicz was crouched behind home plate. Looking out at pitcher Kenley Jansen, he noticed something no viewer could see.

“He had that look in his eye,” Federowicz said. “He was angry. Like ‘I’m going to get you out. There’s no way you’re going to get a hit off me.’ ”

The reigning American League Most Valuable Player, Miguel Cabrera, was in the batter’s box with one out in the ninth inning and the Dodgers leading 2-1. Ian Kinsler was on second base.



Jansen started Cabrera with a belt-high fastball on the inside corner, a two-seamer clocked at 98 mph. Cabrera swung and missed. The second pitch was a cutter, Jansen’s trademark pitch. Federowicz caught it a few inches low for a ball.

Jansen went back to the cutter, inside corner, and Cabrera couldn’t catch up again. Then he dared the slugger Ellis called “the best hitter of our generation” with a cut fastball down the middle of the plate. At 99 mph, a speed that would make the great Mariano Rivera blush, all Cabrera could do was foul it away.



“Then Kenley came right back with it when other guys may not be as confident throwing that same pitch,” Ellis said.

Cabrera took a 99-mph cutter a few inches inside for a ball, then swung through a 98-mph cutter on the outside corner for strike three.

It was the fastest he’d thrown a baseball in four years.



Taking his lumps

The only problem with Jansen’s success against Cabrera is that it came in isolation.

Victor Martinez was the next batter up. He saw two cut fastballs from Jansen clocked at 96, and hit the second for an RBI single that tied the game. Wednesday night, Jansen faced Martinez again and allowed a home run on another 96 mph cutter — the game-winning run in a 7-6 Detroit victory.



How could a pitcher look like the best closer in baseball and still squander two games in crucial situations on back-to-back nights?

“I’ve seen a lot of guys, it seems like when they have trouble one night it’s always two in a row,” said Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, a former teammate and coach of Rivera’s in New York. “I’ve seen Mo do it many times.”

In that moment, Jansen didn’t care to be compared to baseball’s all-time saves leader.

“I don’t care about Mariano, man. I’m me,” he said. “These guys are tough. Victor is tough, that whole team is tough. There’s a reason they go to the ALCS. They are one of the best teams in the American League.”



Jansen refused to blame his failure Thursday on pitching in a non-save situation. But clearly, he had a different intensity against Cabrera than any of the other nine batters he faced in the two-game series. The radar gun said so. So did his face.

Federowicz hesitated a moment when asked if Jansen flashed the same angry look against any other hitters.

“Kinsler, he didn’t quite have it,” Federowicz said. “He was still throwing 94-95, I think I saw, but you could really tell once that runner got (on base) and there was a little bit more pressure situation, he really turned it on.”



Over two nights, Jansen proved that he can throw faster, with more consistency, than any pitcher currently on the Dodgers’ $115 million staff. Five years into his career as a pitcher at 26, Jansen proved he’s still evolving.



Making the transition

It’s a well documented fact that Jansen converted from catching to pitching full-time at age 21 in 2009. From the time he signed as a 16-year-old amateur in 2004, the raw numbers show Jansen’s gradual decline as a hitter moving up the minor-league ladder, followed by a rapid ascent as a pitcher. Jansen pitched his first game on a Single-A mound in July 2009 and made his major-league debut in July 2010.



The emotions involved in Jansen’s conversion are just as raw, but not as well-documented. Put simply, he didn’t want to be a pitcher at first. Privately, he talked about retiring. Jansen didn’t merely have to be convinced to switch positions; his identity as a baseball player had to undergo a complete makeover.

The Dodgers were able to envision the finished product before Jansen himself: a power pitcher with the coveted downward angle of a 6-foot-5 right-hander, and a cut fastball with special potential.



Jansen is still growing into that identity five years later. The anger he apparently needs to touch 99 mph on a radar gun isn’t always accessible. His facial hair is as long as it’s ever been, and even Jansen’s closely cropped beard is still more polite than intimidating.

On a less superficial level, while many pitchers’ arms are breaking down at alarming rates, Jansen is only building up.

The fantasy sports website rotoworld.com recently published a chart comparing the velocity of major-league relivers’ fastballs in 2013 to 2014. Only 11 of the 52 pitchers listed are throwing faster this year. Jansen’s average fastball velocity increased more than any of them, by 2.1 mph, and that was before he threw a 96-mph fastball to Martinez on Thursday night.



But why? Is there something more to Jansen’s success than a look in his eye?



Heart of the matter

Jansen thinks there is. He can trace it back to a piece of chalk.

Dodgers assistant pitching coach Ken Howell used the chalk to draw a straight line on a bullpen mound. Jansen’s job was to keep his delivery as close to the line as possible from start to release.

“That’s the one thing I feel like when my velo goes up — if my direction is more straight than what it was,” he said. “My thing is, stay tall. Stay in one line, don’t cross too much from my body. I know I throw across my body.”



The point of the exercise is to repeat it in a game, without the chalk. For a pitcher to develop fundamentally sound mechanics that he can repeat with every pitch takes years of practice. In Jansen’s case, it seems to have taken about five years.

But even that narrative is too simplistic. Jansen said he was clocked throwing 100 mph before he reached the majors. The zip on his pitches isn’t new, it merely took a two-year hiatus.

“When Kenley first came up his first year and a half or so, he was pretty much in that same area,” Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt said. “I can’t put anything on it other than he did have the condition.”



On July 26, 2011, Jansen had an irregular heartbeat. He didn’t tell anyone until after that night’s game, when he pitched a scoreless ninth inning against the Colorado Rockies. A Dodgers trainer drove the pitcher to White Memorial Hospital, where Jansen received an electric shock to return his heart to its normal rhythm.

Jansen was given blood-thinning medication, spent a month on the disabled list, phased caffeine out of his diet and tried to return to business as usual. That worked for a time.

The Dodgers were playing in Denver on Aug. 29, 2012 when Jansen’s heartbeat acted up again. After another round of blood thinners, and another stay on the disabled list, Jansen underwent a three-hour procedure after the season to correct his condition.



The procedure worked, but the recovery time limited Jansen’s off-season workouts. With a full off-season after the Dodgers lost the 2013 National League Championship Series, Jansen was more free to work out.

“The thing I did most this year is run more, work my core,” Jansen said.

With his body in better shape, and his mind more attuned to his mechanics, the results have followed.

“I think it’s just the timing,” he said. “Everything is right this time. I’m not trying to throw hard. I’m being effortless out there and just letting it go. I think knowing more how to pitch, everything is coming at the right time right now.”



The next step

Jansen said there is always room for improvement. One skill he might want to master: the ability to discover, on command, the anger Federowicz saw Tuesday night.

To master the trick, someone might need to hold a mirror to Jansen’s face with Miguel Cabrera standing in the batter’s box in the ninth inning of a one-run game. That opportunity might not come again until October.

“Kenley’s funny in just his makeup, how he carries himself,” Ellis said. “A very funny, quiet, unassuming guy. But he can turn the switch … especially in these one-run games, or when the situation gets tighter. Sometimes it’s his own fault. He pitches himself into those situations. But he’s got the ability to turn the switch. And when he does, he is a handful.”

