Kenley Jansen was a good pitcher. A good closer. Nothing wrong with Kenley Jansen. You could win a lot of games with Kenley Jansen in the ninth inning, and the Los Angeles Dodgers did.

Then, more happened. Game 5 of the NLDS happened, and that’s when Kenley Jansen discovered he could be great, that it was in him to pitch on the edge of elimination, of fatigue, of regret, of brilliance, of all that stuff that scares the regular guys a little. That he was OK with that. In fact, it rather thrilled him.

The night of Oct. 13. Washington D.C. An inning, then two, and into a third. Walks happened. Baserunners. A hit. Fifty-one pitches came and went, and then big ol’ Kenley came off the field last October in a puddle of sweat and satisfaction.

“I never thought I could be on that level,” Jansen said this week, “and I did it.”

He sat on the floor in a hallway beneath Nationals Park that night, a party raging in the next room over, his eyes half closed. He celebrated the self-discovery, happy just to listen in on the joy from down the hall, to be alone in all that. It was, turned out, not only the moment Jansen believed launched him to a more special career (and a five-year, $80 million contract), but the last time – as of Tuesday – he issued so much as a walk.

The Eckersley-ian numbers going on three months into his eighth big-league season:

• 15 saves in 15 opportunities, 4-0 record

• 29 2/3 innings, 17 hits, 0.91 ERA, 0.573 WHIP

• 50 strikeouts, 0 walks

• 15.2 strikeouts per nine

• .160 batting average against

• 107 batters faced, 6 three-ball counts

• One immaculate inning – one inning, three batters, three strikeouts, nine pitches

View photos It’s mid-June and Los Angeles closer Kenley Jansen has 50 strikeouts and zero walks. (AP Images) More

This, with one pitch, the cutter, along with a slider the other 4 or 5 percent of the time. Same fire-breathing velocity. Same intent. Lots of Mariano Rivera videos later, one career transforming game later, something … better.

“I learned how to pitch here,” said Jansen, the former catcher who’d cut his teeth on all of about 60 minor-league innings. “It took me some time to find myself, to learn who I am.

“I’m more focused now on that one hitter. That one pitch. Like, what is the meaning behind this pitch?”

So he was asked if he thought he could go an entire season without walking a batter. He laughed. He shrugged. Because mid-June without a walk by itself is madness. Because he wouldn’t entirely dismiss the idea of three more months of the same.

“I just go day by day, man,” he said. “I’ll just keep attacking. At the end of the year, if it’s zero [walks] or one or two, three four, we’ll see.”

***

The one notion that was lost in the Andrew Miller phenomenon of last October – best reliever pitches when and where there is the most trouble, and so is not tied to the ninth inning – is there are few pitchers like Andrew Miller, and even Andrew Miller has a limit.

In a six-month season, just about every night brings hard, late decisions, brings those “high-leverage” moments everyone likes to talk about, and if you’re not careful, well, we’ll let Terry Francona take it from there.

“I don’t think Andrew ever got overexposed, I think I pitched him too much,” Francona told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “I was talking about that the other day. You don’t ever see an ERA next to my name, but I should have got a couple of his runs.

“I was bothered by that last week. I shouldn’t have done that. We say it all the time. We want our guys to pitch as much as possible, but not too much. That one outing was too much.”

View photos Andrew Miller has swapped roles with Cody Allen and will pitch as the closer for the Indians for the time being. (AP Images) More

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