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Kenley Jansen on Sunday night in Cincinnati pitched his third consecutive scoreless appearance since his return to the Dodgers bullpen after missing over three weeks dealing with an irregular heartbeat. Jansen struck out three batters on Sunday in his scoreless inning, putting him on the precipice of joining some exclusive company.
Jansen now has 90 strikeouts on the season, in 59 innings, just six shy of his career high set last season. With nine games left in the season he has an outside shot to strikeout 100 batters, something done only 10 times in Dodgers history.
| Dodgers With 100 Strikeouts In Relief | ||||
| Pitcher | Year | Strikeouts | Innings | Batters Faced |
| Mike Marshall | 1974 | 143 | 208.1 | 857 |
| Eric Gagne | 2003 | 137 | 82.1 | 306 |
| Eric Gagne | 2002 | 114 | 82.1 | 314 |
| Eric Gagne | 2004 | 114 | 82.1 | 326 |
| Jonathan Broxton | 2009 | 114 | 76.0 | 300 |
| Pedro Martinez | 1993 | 113 | 107.0 | 444 |
| Takashi Saito | 2006 | 107 | 78.1 | 303 |
| Ken Howell | 1986 | 104 | 97.2 | 437 |
| Tom Niedenfuer | 1985 | 102 | 106.1 | 415 |
| Charlie Hough | 1977 | 100 | 122.1 | 532 |
| Source: Baseball-Reference.com | ||||
Marshall and Gagne, the top two names on the list, each won Cy Young Awards in their high strikeout seasons. Broxton narrowly missed joining this list two more times, as he struck out 99 in 2007 and 97 in 2006.
Jansen missed by just four strikeouts in 2011, and in doing so set a major league record with 16.10 strikeouts per nine innings. His strikeouts are understandably down this season, but his overall numbers are still very good, and similar in many ways to last season.
| Year | IP | BF | H | HR | BB% | K% | ERA | FIP | xFIP | tERA | SIERA |
| 2011 | 53.2 | 218 | 30 | 3 | 11.9% | 44.0% | 2.85 | 1.74 | 2.09 | 2.02 | 1.59 |
| 2012 | 59.0 | 230 | 31 | 6 | 8.7% | 39.1% | 2.44 | 2.55 | 2.66 | 2.24 | 1.82 |
Jansen needs 10 strikeouts in the Dodgers' final nine games to join the century club. Will he do it?