How therapy helped Braves closer Kenley Jansen reclaim his place among the game’s elite

Kenley Jansen began last Monday the way he tries to begin most mornings. Soon after he woke up, in a hotel room in New York, he meditated. He listened to music to enhance his focus. On the bus ride to Citi Field, seated beside his Atlanta Braves teammates, he did breathing exercises. Several hours later, he ended his night as he prefers, something few have ever done better: He closed out the ninth inning, collecting the 357th save of his career.

Jansen, who recorded save No. 358 on Saturday, turned 34 last September. In deference to his age, in recent years he has revamped his diet and his workouts to regain the velocity of his signature cut fastball. More importantly, Jansen believes, he has reconfigured his mind. Jansen credited an embrace of therapy and meditation as vital to his revival.

“I feel like I’m a better player than even the years when I was so terrific with the Dodgers,” Jansen said. “I feel like 2021 and 2022, I feel like a better version of myself from my younger days. Because I’m more equipped, I’m more mature now. I went through stuff. I faced adversity. And when you face adversity, you have to know how to deal with it. I dealt with it, and I overcame it.”

Jansen began therapy after the 2020 season. He had captured a title with the Dodgers that fall. It was an experience, he can admit now, that was “like sweet and sour.” He savored the championship. But he also found himself unmoored by how the World Series ended. Jansen had always envisioned himself collecting the final out when Los Angeles’ drought ended. Instead he watched from the bullpen as Julio Urías closed the show.

Jansen did not blame Urías. He did not blame Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. He did not, really, even blame himself. He had rebounded from his professional nadir in 2019, but he recognized he was not the best option in the highest leverage. The realization tormented him.

“Sometimes you have to understand that guys can pick you up,” Jansen said. “But deep down, it bothers you. Because you want that ball. And you’re so used to wanting to help the organization to succeed. For me, not being there … I’m sorry, I’m not a loser. I need to be out there.”

A closer must sheath himself in armor to protect against the inevitability of late-game collapse. In order to reclaim his place as one of the game’s best, Jansen needed to drop his guard. An acknowledgment of his vulnerability allowed him to accept his agent’s suggestion about therapy. Jansen started going in 2021. He has continued it through 2022, as he acclimates to his new home in Atlanta.

The Braves have played sluggish baseball through the season’s first month. Jansen has not been the problem. He has converted all eight of his save opportunities, avoided surrendering a home run and cut down his walk rate. Through Sunday’s games, his 7.5 strikeout-to-walk ratio was his best since 2017, the year he finished fifth in the National League Cy Young Award voting.

He presents himself as a dream to manager Brian Snitker. Managing Jansen is “not hard,” Snitker said. “Just give him the ball in the ninth inning when you’ve got a lead.”

His primary pitch remains his cutter, a generational weapon. One day in spring training, veteran reliever Darren O’Day hovered nearby during a bullpen session. O’Day knew Jansen threw an excellent cutter. But he had not realized the pitch’s “unbelievable” combination of break and rise, he said. “He’s like a unicorn, really.”

The cutter carried Jansen from his debut in 2010 through his peak in 2017. No reliever was more valuable than Jansen during his first seven full seasons, according to FanGraphs; Jansen slightly outpaced Craig Kimbrel and Aroldis Chapman. After heavy usage in the 2017 playoffs, Jansen saw his velocity dip in 2018. His ERA rose to a career-worst 3.01. He got annoyed when reporters asked about his diminished cutter.

That winter, Jansen underwent heart surgery for the second time in his career. He could not work out in the offseason. He said he was not cleared to lift weights until the second week of spring training. “I couldn’t do nothing,” he said. The receipt came in his results: His ERA ballooned to 3.71. Roberts did not trust him in October. The occasional jeering he heard at Dodger Stadium wounded him.

Jansen intended to reclaim his mantle in 2020. The pandemic upended him. He caught COVID-19 just before the season resumed. His son got sick, too. The family recovered, but Jansen felt disjointed for much of the year. He worried about his heart. He worried about his family. He felt the weight of disappointing his teammates, disappointing his city, disappointing himself. His velocity improved, but his pitching was erratic.

At times, inside the playoff bubble, Jansen looked like the three-time All-Star from the previous decade. He logged three spotless innings against Atlanta in the National League Championship Series. At times, though, he resembled the predictable pitcher from the previous two seasons. Jansen gave up a run to Tampa Bay in Game 3 and took the loss in the preposterous Game 4 defeat. He did not pitch again in 2020.

In the moment, as the Dodgers celebrated a bizarre achievement, Jansen tried to revel. Yet he felt the emptiness of not fulfilling his vision. His disappointment was obvious to those around him. Early in the winter, one of Jansen’s agents, Chris Sisto of Wasserman Baseball, suggested therapy. Perhaps a professional, Sisto explained, could help Jansen process the past few seasons.

Jansen made an appointment. He got on a Zoom call. “After the first session,” Sisto said, “you could tell he was just relieved.”

Through his sessions, Jansen developed practices to center himself. He learned to describe the mind as a muscle. “By playing this game for so long, you’re going to gain weight — I’m talking about mental weight,” Jansen said. “Like so much stuff you went through. You have to exercise your mind, and feed it with the healthy stuff. So you can condition yourself, and then you can lose all that weight.”

He added, “You’re not going to be zero pounds. But if you condition yourself, put yourself back in shape, you can function well.”

For Jansen, the exercises often involved breathing and meditation. He added them to his regular regimen, at the ready for moments of crisis. Sometimes, during games, he closes his eyes and steadies his breathing. “You go back to the traumatizing events, and you go back also to the great events,” Jansen said. “That’s how you figure things out.”

Jansen entered 2021 in the final season of his five-year, $80 million contract. He knew it might be his last campaign as a Dodger. He intended “to go out on a high note,” he said. Jansen could not grace the heights he touched in 2017 — but he was still quite good. He gave up fewer hits and fewer homers. He stayed calm with traffic on the bases.

For years, Dodgers officials had seen Jansen as someone who left his emotions unsheathed. He spoke his mind. (“If it goes, it goes,” Jansen said about his heart, when facing the prospect of surgery in 2018.) He rode the roller coaster of results, inflated by success but haunted by failure. Some within the organization believed Jansen attached too much of his self-esteem to being a closer. If the Dodgers ever removed him from the role mid-season, some officials feared, Jansen might crumble.

There were no such concerns last season. Jansen reduced his ERA to 2.22 and accumulated 38 saves. In October, he struck out 14 batters in seven scoreless innings. When he struggled, he had mechanisms to cope.

“Going through therapy gave him a consistent process for his mind, in preparation, and handling the good and the bad,” Roberts said. “Last year was as consistent as I saw his head and his work, all year long.”

Jansen had hoped to return to Los Angeles. His desire for a multi-year contract was not immediately reciprocated by the Dodgers. After the lockout, negotiations got sidetracked by the team’s pursuit of Freddie Freeman. During the interlude, the Braves swooped in with a one-year, $16 million deal.

The short-term agreement has incentivized Jansen to be present, because “all I can think about right now is today,” he said. This is another tenet of his therapy. He could concentrate on the immediate challenge presented by that day’s opponent, or his daily, internal challenge to improve his command.

Jansen views himself as part of an elite closing lineage. He still watches film of Yankees legend Mariano Rivera. Like Jansen, Rivera devastated with his cutter. And like Rivera, Jansen has expanded his repertoire beyond the pitch, to include a slider and two-seam sinker. Jansen measures himself against Rivera’s impeccable command, just as he measures himself against peers like Kimbrel, who replaced Jansen in Los Angeles, or Chapman, or a younger relief ace like Brewers closer Josh Hader.

“I want Kimbrel to be great,” Jansen said. “Now he’s starting his new journey with the Dodgers. I want him to be great over there. I want Chapman to bounce back from the adversity he has had with the Yankees and to be great. While I’m doing it, I’m looking at those guys. I’m pushing myself through those guys. I’m watching Hader right now, I’m pushing myself through him. When you see them do great, it makes you want to be even greater.”

Jansen believes his career could extend well beyond 2022. He smiled when asked about the Hall of Fame. He said he tries not to worry about it. He knows he has a chance. It will take several more seasons like 2021 to fortify his case — many years of breathing and meditating and talking through past trauma. On that front, the new horizons opened to him through therapy, Jansen is happy to chat.

“I’m not shy about that,” Jansen said. “I’m not feeling like I’m weak. I feel like I’m stronger.”

(Photo: Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)