Dodgers: Recounting Blake Treinen’s winding path to LA

The Dodgers added reliever Blake Treinen on a one-year, $10 million deal. Will he pitch like he did as an All-Star in 2018, or remain stuck in his 2019 rut?

Over the course of just two seasons, Treinen, a now-31-year-old righty sinkerballer, went from being arguably the best reliever in all of baseball to being removed from the closing role by the Oakland Athletics during the regular season and being non-tendered this offseason by the team that drafted him back in 2011, before being signed by the Dodgers. The lanky 6’5” power pitcher mixed his sinker, fastball, changeup, and slider almost perfectly two seasons ago, solidifying the A’s bullpen on his way to his first career selection to the All-Star team. A seventh-round pick out of South Dakota State, a school that only went Division I the year he signed with them, Treinen needed less than 50 games in Single-A before being elevated into the MLB.

So how exactly did he get to LA? Did he rise through the ranks as a top prospect or did he emerge from obscurity? Is he on the rise or has he already hit his peak?

Like many stories surrounding the Oakland A’s, from their general manager Billy Beane’s to that to their historic losses of the 1980s against the Dodgers, the story of Treinen belongs in Hollywood, and fittingly, that’s exactly where he ended up.

In this article, I’ll get into the story of Blake Treinen, across his time in the minors and with the Washington Nationals into his peak with the Athletics, before discussing his 2019 season and what his future with the Dodgers in 2020 holds.