The real Kenley Jansen just stood up as the Angels' closer

We're gonna have a problem here. The Angels' bullpen has been held together by string throughout the entirety of the 2025 season, with Kenley Jansen doing his best to provide the team with some semblance of stability as the guys around him struggle mightily (besides Ryan Zeferjahn). Well, the month of May has not been kind to the Angels' closer and his age is starting to show. It's hard to overly criticize Jansen, as he has only allowed runs in 2 of his 13 games pitched thus far, but there are some indicators that his season might start to go sideways after an ideal start to his Angels' tenure.

The real Kenley Jansen just stood up as the Angels' closer

Jansen has been notorious for not starting his appearances strong for a few years now -- his velocity is always down at the beginning of his outings, and he does not kick it into high gear until he allows a baserunner or two on. That calling card was on full display during the Angels' second game of their series versus San Diego and it did not end well, as he issued a free pass to the lead-off batter then a walk-off home run to Fernando Tatis Jr. The home run pitch from Jansen was just 91 MPH, which is unfortunately starting to become more of the norm for the 37-year-old.

In his five outings this month, Jansen's velocity on his cutter is down. In April, Jansen sat 92.4 MPH and topped out at 95.8 MPH. In May, he's averaging 91.3 MPH and has topped out at 94.1 MPH. The induced vertical break on his cutter is also down -- in April he averaged 19.4" of ride, and in May he's down to 18.5". The spin rate on his cutter is also down, as well as the velocity on his two-seamer and slider/sweeper. For a veteran pitcher like Jansen, those signs are pretty alarming especially given his arm injuries in recent years.

Jansen has already allowed as many home runs in 2025 (4) as he did all of last year -- and all of them occurred this month. In fact, he has more home runs allowed than strikeouts in May. After not allowing an earned run over his first eight games of the season, Jansen has allowed eight in his three innings pitched this month. He has technically yet to blow a save and his eight runs are only from two outings -- last night against the Padres and a one-off blow-up game against Detroit -- but he has just 11 innings pitched this year. It does not feel like a stretch to be critical of a pitcher with two bad games in such a small sample size on the year.

The Angels desperately need their closer to re-gain his form as they await the returns of Ben Joyce, Robert Stephenson and maybe even Sam Bachman from their respective injuries. Hopefully Jansen's outings against Detroit and San Diego were anomalies, but he really needs to rear back and bring it if he is to regain his form.

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