Troy Percival, then a rookie setup man with 26 big-league appearances under his belt, watched from the visiting dugout in the Oakland Coliseum as Lee Smith, then the Angels’ 37-year-old closer, gave up a walk-off grand slam to Mark McGwire in an 8-5 loss to the Athletics on June 30, 1995.
It was just the second blown save of a season that began with Smith converting his first 19 opportunities, the burly right-hander showing few signs of regression as he neared the end of a Hall-of-Fame career in which he racked up 478 saves, ranking third on baseball’s all-time list behind Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman.
As Percival headed toward the clubhouse that night, the impressionable 26-year-old known for his feisty mound demeanor and occasional temper tantrums in the minor leagues began to envision the havoc Smith would wreak on the locker room.
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“He came in, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh God, here we go,’ ” Percival, now 56, said in a phone interview. “Lee sat down, took a deep breath and said, ‘Give me a beer, boy,’ and within a few minutes, he was back to his normal self.
“I’d been beating my head against the wall even in the minor leagues over giving up a hit. That’s when I started paying attention [to Smith]. I began to realize that if you want to have a long career, you have to be ready to deal with failure. Just watching his reaction to failure, even if he never said a word, was huge.”
Percival replaced Smith as closer in 1996 and recorded 316 of his 358 career saves in 10 seasons with the Angels, nailing down the final three outs of a World Series-clinching Game 7 win over the San Francisco Giants in 2002, and Percival credits the “immeasurable” lessons he learned from Smith as a factor in his success.
Three decades later the Angels hope a similar dynamic will play out with Kenley Jansen, the 37-year-old closer who signed a one-year, $10-million deal on the eve of spring training, serving as mentor to 24-year-old right-hander Ben Joyce.
The parallels are uncanny. Jansen, who ranks fourth behind Smith with 447 saves, 350 of them coming during his 12-year stint with the Dodgers, is the same age Smith was when he arrived in Anaheim. Smith racked up 434 saves in 15 years before signing with the Angels. Jansen’s 447 saves have come in 15 seasons.
Like Percival in 1995, Joyce is a flamethrowing closer-in-waiting, though Joyce’s heat, as he has shown in 43 appearances over two seasons, is a few degrees higher than Percival’s.
Joyce’s four-seam fastball averaged 102.1 mph last season and hit 105.5 on a strikeout of Dodgers utility man Tommy Edman on Sept. 3, the fastest pitch thrown in the majors all year. Percival’s fastball sat between 96 and 98 mph before a degenerative hip condition slowed him in 2004.
“I know Joyce has incredible stuff, but closing ballgames is a different animal, and when you get an opportunity to watch a seasoned veteran do it, it can only help you,” said Percival, who is entering his second season as manager for the Pioneer League’s Idaho Falls Chukars.
“That young man, barring injury, has a long career with a lot of saves ahead of him, and he can probably save himself a lot of blown saves just by watching the old guy go out and do it. I hope Ben can wrap his arms around it and take the opportunity to learn what he can.”
Joyce, who assumed a ninth-inning role after Carlos Estévez was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies last July, embraced the new bullpen hierarchy, even if that means relinquishing the closer job and serving as Jansen’s setup man most of the time.
“If it works out that I’m an understudy, I’m all for it,” Joyce said Thursday. “I’m trying to stay around him as much as I can. Even [Wednesday], he was throwing a bullpen, and I was all up in his space, but he’s been great about it. He’s gone out of his way to talk to me, teach me things, give me pointers. I’m definitely taking advantage of it.”
Jansen was mentored as a young Dodger by veteran relievers such as J.P. Howell, Jamey Wright, Jonathan Broxton, Brandon League and Brian Wilson. When he established himself as a dominant closer, Jansen mentored young relievers such as Brusdar Graterol, Victor González and Caleb Ferguson.
“I learned from the guys who did it before me — now I have a little experience, and I’m gonna share my wisdom with him,” Jansen said of Joyce. “This kid is special. He’s throwing 105 mph. He’s fearless, and that’s what we need. Anything I can do to help make him better, I’m going to do.”
What can Jansen teach Joyce?
“How to deal with situations,” Jansen said. “How to make sure the game doesn’t get big on you, that it doesn’t speed up on you. How to attack the hitters, knowing who’s in the batter’s box, who’s on deck, who’s in the hole, knowing your strengths, knowing the batters’ strengths, when not to worry about the base runners … a lot of things.”
What can Joyce learn from Jansen?
“The possibilities are endless,” Joyce said. “How does he approach failure? It’s so hard as the closer, you feel like the game is completely riding on your hands, which is an awesome feeling when it goes well. But when it goes bad, it’s definitely tough. How does he bounce back from that?”
The 6-foot-5, 265-pound Jansen didn’t deal with much failure in his first eight seasons with the Dodgers, when he went 24-13 with a 2.08 earned-run average and 230 saves in 474 games. But when he struggled for stretches over his final four seasons in Los Angeles (2018-21), he was forced to confront failure.
Jansen has thrived on baseball’s biggest stage, with a 12-9 record, 2.20 ERA and 20 saves in 59 postseason games, but he also set a World Series record with his fourth career blown save in 2020 against Tampa Bay, watching from the bullpen as Julio Urías notched the final seven outs of the Dodgers’ series-clinching Game 6 win.
“Sometimes, you can’t take it as a negative — you have to take it as part of the learning process,” said Jansen, who went 4-2 with a 3.29 ERA in 54 games for the Boston Red Sox last season, converting 27 of 31 save opportunities, striking out 62 and walking 20 in 54 ⅔ innings.
“You have to learn from your failures and move on. Your mindset is, how strong can you be mentally? I started developing that after [a 2017 World Series loss to Houston], going into 2018 and 2019. Those are the years I learned so much about myself, and I feel like I’m a better pitcher, a better man, now than I was at the beginning of my career.”
Joyce also plans to observe how Jansen approaches the more mundane “day-to-day” aspects of the job.
“How does he approach the game, his pregame and postgame routines, his recovery?” Joyce said. “You obviously have to put a lot into it to be able to pitch that many games over 15 years.”
Jansen spends the first three innings watching the game on a clubhouse television to see how hitters are approaching pitchers. Then he goes to the training room to complete his stretching routine before heading to the bullpen in the sixth inning.
That will set a little better example for Joyce than Smith set for Percival. Smith was so laid back he often napped on a clubhouse couch or in the training room for the first four or five innings before heading to the bullpen.
But with a 6-3 lead over the Cleveland Indians in the eighth inning of a July 26, 1995 game in Anaheim, manager Marcel Lachemann looked into the bullpen, and Smith wasn’t there.
“It was my job and Rick Smith’s job to wake him,” Percival said, referring to the athletic trainer. “I ran back to the clubhouse, and Lee’s on the couch sleeping. I nudged him, and he said, “Cookie Dough, what’s the sco?’ I said, ‘It’s 6-3 in the eighth.’ He said, ‘Get my shoes, boy!’ They were already on the golf cart.
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“He gets down to the bullpen, he might have had four throws, not one of them a pitch off a mound, and he went out and retired the side in the ninth on six pitches.”
Jansen smiles and shakes his head in amazement and amusement as the Smith story is relayed to him.
“Wow, that’s impressive, that’s unbelievable,” Jansen said. “But it’s probably something I’ll never do.”
A sleeping giant, Jansen is not, but the established and accomplished veteran could play an outsize role in the development of the Angels’ potential next great closer.
“He feels like when we have the lead and the bullpen gate opens, the game is over, he expects to win,” Joyce said of Jansen. “That’s the mentality you need to have in that position. I’m really excited to watch him in person and learn from him.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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