The 2018 season was a rollercoaster for Los Angeles Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen, who struggled at the beginning of the year before bouncing back — only to have his second half plagued by reoccurring heart issues during a road series against the Colorado Rockies.
Jansen was sidelined for less than two weeks while recovering and showed signs of rust upon initially returning, yielding a combined seven runs in four consecutive appearances from Aug. 20-28.
The 31-year-old eventually shook off the cobwebs and found success in September before again thriving during the postseason, yielding only two runs over parts of three series.
While he didn’t want to admit at the time, Jansen believes his heart scare from last summer led to his inconsistencies in the second half of the 2018 season, via Bill Plaschke of the L.A. Times:
“I was two personalities,” he admitted one recent evening at Camelback Ranch. “One personality wanted to be there for my guys. The other personality wanted to call it a season and go do the surgery and get off the medication.”
“I’m saying it now, I didn’t say it then, because I didn’t want somebody feeling sorry for me,” he said. “But once my heart issue happened, it was in my head, it switched up my life, it messed up my whole season, my second half was ruined.”
After the conclusion of what was his ninth MLB season, Jansen underwent a successful heart procedure in November and believes any problems that previously derailed him are now in the past.
Looking ahead to the 2019 season, Jansen entered Spring Training having already thrown multiple bullpen sessions before reporting to Camelback Ranch.
Having ramped up his workload when compared to previous Spring Trainings, Jansen hopes to avoid another slow start in the regular season. He also changed his diet and lost weight as a result of the health scare.
