Dodgers: Which relievers have been the best in high leverage situations?

The Dodgers’ bullpen continues to be the Achilles heel of the 2019 club.  Which relievers have been the best in high leverage situations?

Are the 2019 Dodgers better than the last two versions of the Dodgers?  It’s a debate that carries weight and is a very good topic.  While what transpires in October will ultimately decide the answer to that question there remains one big Achilles heel for the 2019 club; the bullpen.

The 2019 Dodgers have a bullpen that continues to improve, with the one exception being Kenley Jansen.  Wednesday night the Dodgers won thanks to a walk-off home run by Max Muncy, but extra innings should have never been played.  Jansen came in to hold a one-run lead in the ninth inning but allowed a solo home run that caused the game to go ten innings.

With Kenley struggling over the last two months, many are calling for the Dodgers to remove him from the closer role.  If the Dodgers do go with a closer by committee, who should handle high leverage ninth-inning situations?  To break that down here are the high leverage stats (According to Baseball-Reference) for each of the Dodgers’ primary late-inning relievers:

Jansen: .220 AVG allowed, .275 OBP, .430 SLG%

Kelly: .286 AVG allowed, .390 OBP, .429 SLG%

Baez: .169 AVG allowed, .234 OBP, .338 SLG%

Urias: .200 AVG allowed, .317 OBP, .380 SLG%

There are a few things to take away from these stats.  The first is that Joe Kelly’s brutal start to the season has really inflated his season totals.  While he technically has the worst stats of the Dodgers’ four late-inning relievers, he has been as good as anyone recently.  He has only pitched 2 1/3 innings since his June 1st turnaround that qualify as “high leverage”.

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Then there is Pedro Baez who is technically the best high leverage reliever of the players listed.  Petey has been a bit sloppy this month and had an ugly outing in Miami, but he did pitch a scoreless tenth inning Wednesday night and picked up the win after Muncy ended the game with his walk-off homer.

Kenley Jansen’s high leverage stats are actually not bad, although the slugging percentage is high thanks to his 1.4 HR/9IP rate.  Every time that Jansen does give up runs they are usually magnified such as Wednesday night when his one run allowed extended the game.  Hopefully, he can turn his season around and get back on track.

Julio Urias has been awesome in high leverage situations and he has had the most asked of him since he usually pitches multiple innings when he comes out of the bullpen.  He has even earned saves for pitching two to three innings to close games in a Josh Hader type role.  Once he returns from his suspension it will be interesting to see if he pitches back to back days.

Kenta Maeda is the other late-inning reliever that the Dodgers will use in October but for now, he remains in the rotation and will likely stay there until mid-September. Maeda has pitched just one inning of relief this season, so the sample size was not there to include him as one of the club’s late-inning relievers for now.

Overall, the Dodgers’ bullpen ranks seventh in baseball with a 4.05 ERA.  Although the playoffs are a virtual lock, the bullpen is still in hunger games mode for the remainder of the season.  If Kenley Jansen cannot right the ship, one of the other three late-inning relievers, if not all of them, will be asked to close games in the postseason.