New Dodgers Relief Pitcher Blake Treinen Talks About 2020 Expectations

The Dodgers’ one-year, $10M contract with free agent pitcher Blake Treinen became official on Sunday. After the deal was announced, the reliever spoke about a few misconceptions after a down 2019 season, and his outlook for 2020.

#Dodgers took a chance on a bounceback candidate in Blake Treinen. He thinks they made a good bethttps://t.co/ocQBSR5qkg

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— Bill Plunkett (@billplunkettocr) December 15, 2019

First off, the money quote… “I’m not a broken pitcher.” The 31 year-old expanded beyond that after enduring a rough 2019 campaign.

I feel that’s kind of been the consensus across baseball right now. It’s kind of entertaining to me to listen to. I understand, from the outside looking in, there’s some validation behind it. A guy has a bad year, there’s a lot of criticism involved and that’s just how the game goes.

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After dominating in 2018, the right-hander found struggles for the first time in his career last season. Shoulder issues and general ineffectiveness bloated the reliever’s peripherals to career highs — all in a bad way. But he feels that was all an outlier. 

I’m going to sit here until I’m blue in the face and tell you guys it’s not who I am as a pitcher. And I believe the rest of the league believes that as well.

Those struggles, by the way, he feels should be fairly simple to fix.

There’s no magic formula. It’s pretty basic. It’s just a matter of execution.

The sinker is what makes me successful. When I was right, in my opinion, my sinker was really good and at times dominant. Being able to locate all my pitches in the zone and for chase when I needed to, that’s pretty much success for anybody…

That sinker helped strike out 100 batters in 2018. That sinker helped Treinen earn his first All-Star berth that year and even a few AL Cy Young votes. And that sinker could help the Dodgers form an impressive bullpen in 2020.

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