Dodgers: Recounting Blake Treinen’s winding path to LA

Treinen’s Road to Success

Treinen’s story follows that tragic plot arc of many relief pitchers in today’s game, but before he even was drafted, his story is certainly different than most. Despite not playing NCAA collegiate baseball in his freshman year, Treinen trained to walk-on to the Div. I powerhouse program at the University of Arkansas. After failing to make the team, Treinen sent tape to South Dakota State, where he ended up staying until he was drafted by the A’s.

For the first few years of his professional career with the Oakland Athletics and Washington Nationals, Treinen was a starting pitcher. In 2012, Treinen made 15 starts in High-A for the A’s farm team and in 2013, he made 20 starts for the Nationals Double-A squad. Across both of those seasons as a minor league starter, Treinen struck out less than a batter per inning while allowing an opposing batting average of right around .270.

These unremarkable numbers continued in 2015 with the Nats major league club, who he started seven games for. Across 50 total innings that season, Treinen struck out 5.33 hitters per nine innings, but he allowed a minuscule 3.1% HR/FB rate and a solid 2.49 ERA. The promise was certainly there, as was evidenced by his sinker that averaged 95.8 mph. But maybe his value was not as a big-league starting pitcher.

That’s what the Nationals decided at least. His former team opted to push Treinen to the bullpen to leverage his wicked sinker. It worked. His average sinker velocity increased to 97.1 mph, and his numbers improved as well. His K/9 crept up to 8.65, demonstrating the added velocity helped him punch out hitters.

But not every aspect of his game improved. Compared to 2014, his ERA swelled up to 3.86, which was largely thanks to a 14.8% HR/FB rate. The main takeaway outside of home runs came in terms of his control. Treinen went from walking 2.31 batters per nine innings to 4.26 BB/9. That increase amounted to having more runners on base, and this more pressurized environment yielded more home runs and more damaging home runs.

But the difference in FIP was only .40 though, which implied that in general, he really had improved, or at least that he had not fallen off like the rest of his numbers implied. His 2016 season confirmed this, as his numbers largely stayed the same in terms of home runs, strikeouts, and walks, even as his ERA fell back down to 2.28.

The next season, the Nationals traded Treinen, along with a pair of big-time prospects, to the A’s in exchange for established veteran relievers Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson. Treinen’s 2017 numbers looked a lot like his 2015 numbers though, which seemed to help the Nationals decision to ship him off. At the time of the trade, Treinen had a 5.73 ERA and 1.62 WHIP in less than 40 innings according to CBS Sports.

Treinen certainly didn’t seem like a viable setup man, let alone a closer for a potentially solid A’s club, but that’s when things started to change…

Life after the trade: Treinen’s breakout 2018 campaign

After the trade, Treinen found a way to turn his season around once he arrived in Oakland. In 35 games with his new team, Treinen became the closer, saving 13 games with a career-high 9.95 K/9 and a 2.13 ERA. His velocity on his signature sinker was up to 97.8 mph, another career-best mark.

All signs pointed to a major turnaround for Treinen, and his 2018 season proved to be by far the best of his career.

The fateful 2018 season saw Treinen’s sinker liven up to 98mph, but that certainly was not the only career-high the Kansas-native saw that year. Treinen pitched in 80.1 innings, his most in the major leagues and his most as a professional since his 2014 stint as a starter. In those innings, Treinen set a career-high in saves (38), K/9 (11.2), and in FIP (1.82).

His walk rate and HR/FB dropped back down to near their 2014 levels, and his ERA plummetted to an elite 0.78. His ERA was the lowest in the MLB amongst qualified relievers, and his WAR (3.6) led all qualified relievers as well.

This was Treinen’s year. This was the season where all of the potential the A’s saw in him after the Doolittle trade was being realized, as he even out-performed Doolittle. Treinen never really even had a cold stretch. He had sub-1.00 ERA’s in the first and second halves of the season. Across the entire season (six months) Treinen allowed one earned run or less in a month four times. In his 32.1 second-half innings, the newly-dubbed star reliever only allowed five walks.

All of the statistics and certainly the majority of analysts saw Treinen’s breakout campaign as a sign of future success. How could a pitcher this dominate fall out of the spotlight? At the end of the 2018 season, Treinen was 30 years old, still well within his physical prime, without any major injuries to his name during his MLB career. He had successfully navigated the whirlwind of success that he’d seen in 2018 and was ready to regroup with a strong 2019 Athletics club primed to make another run at a Wild Card slot, but in classic Treinen fashion, the most likely result failed to come to pass…

Treinen’s 2019 collapse

After his 2018 season, many predicted Treinen to be one of the elite relievers in the game for the 2019 season, and one month into the year, there were no reasons to doubt that. Through March and April, Treinen had a 3.00 ERA with 18 strikeouts in 15 innings pitched. He had 11 walks though, and five runs allowed were more than he allowed in any one month in 2018. In fact, five runs were more than he’d allowed in any two consecutive months from the 2018 season combined.

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The decline only steepened from this point on. Treinen’s monthly ERAs all were higher than 4.00, with his June and August ERAs climbing above 5.00. In September/October, Treinen only pitched 2.2 innings, allowing five walks and a home run. Even with all of these ERA struggles, in May, Treinen still struck out 11 batters, and he even found a way to curb the control problems that plagued him for the rest of the year, as he only walked one.

Treinen ended up walking 17 batters across June and July with only 15 strikeouts; he also faced less than 45 batters in both months. This marked a steep decline in usage that certainly makes sense based on the statistics, but also must have made it difficult to find a rhythm. A season before, Treinen had thrown 12 or more innings every month.

Maybe he lost some of his signature stuff and his control due to fatigue from being overworked, which makes sense based on his diminished velocity numbers. If that is the case, the less than 60 innings he threw in 2019 should have helped refresh his arm, which bodes well for the Dodgers in 2020.

Treinen’s journey to and through the Major Leagues has been long and circuitous, but if he can regain his 2018 form this season for the Dodgers, he certainly will have a chance to pitch in meaningful late-postseason games in front of 50,000+ for the first time in his career, something that a young kid from Wichita, Kansas certainly never could have envisioned.

Regardless of how well he performs, the Dodgers certainly made the right move in giving Treinen a shot at righting the ship, and hopefully, he repays them with a bounceback season.