When Los Angeles Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen walked to the mound for the ninth inning of Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Braves, his team owned a 4-1 lead and he hadn’t blown a single one of his 24 save opportunities this season.
You can now make that 24 of 25, but the Dodgers being the Dodgers and the Braves being the Braves, Atlanta still lost 5-4 in the 10th to fall to 47-50.
Still, the Braves did force a 10th inning. And they did split the four-game series with baseball’s most formidable team to date in 2017, the Dodgers standing an MLB-best 68-31 at the moment.
“Their bullpen is so deep,” Braves skipper Brian Snitker said during his postgame news conference. “And then they get a three-run lead with that guy on the mound, it says a lot about our character to come back and tie the game.”
If only the Braves’ bullpen appeared to be half as deep as L.A.’s, Atlanta might have realistic reason to view itself as a playoff team instead of a gritty, gutty bunch that teases more than it pleases in the biggest moments, its offense good enough to threaten in almost every game but usually dangerous enough to triumph only against baseball’s non-elite teams.