Kenley Jansen is working on his mechanics. Here’s a look at where he might begin.

Kenley Jansen and manager Dave Roberts said after last night’s game that the closer is working on his mechanics.

Staff photographer John McCoy, who was at the game last night, shot a couple photos that might be instructive as to what Jansen might want to tweak.

A couple disclaimers:

1. I’m not a pitching coach. Rick Honeycutt might look at the same photos you’re about to see and dismiss the differences as trivial.

2. There’s no guarantee that any two random photographs of the same player were shot from the same angle. In fact, they probably weren’t. But there’s a way to reduce the margin of error here. The photo wells at Dodger Stadium aren’t large, and haven’t moved in the last few years. A 2014 photo taken from the home dugout and a 2016 photo taken from the home dugout will be close to the same vantage point. “Close” is not a mathematical term, but this is a fact nonetheless. All the photos you are about to see were shot from the Dodgers’ dugout.

OK. Here’s the first photo, taken last night by McCoy:

Kenley  Jansen

Nothing fancy here, but I’ll point out three things. 1, Jansen’s right arm is loading up to throw, angled away from his body at roughly the same angle the word “Dodgers” is striped across his chest. 2, his left arm is pointing up at a similar angle. You can almost draw a straight line from the baseball to Jansen’s glove across the word “Dodgers.” 3, his front foot is a couple inches off the ground (hard to say how far) and his left toes are pointed up.

OK. Remember those three things. Now here’s a 2014 photo that I grabbed from here:

Kenley  Jansen

Back to our three-point comparison. 1, Jansen’s right arm is loading up to throw, at the same angle as in the previous photo. 2, His left arm is also pointing up at roughly the same angle, but his glove is pointing a bit more sideways. 3, Jansen’s front foot. This is the big point of mechanical departure. I’m not confident enough in the similarity of the two photographers’ angles to say whether Jansen’s left heel is higher off the ground here or not. However, I’m much more confident in writing that Jansen’s toes are not pointed nearly as high as they were in the photo from last night, and if you’re not buying my confidence, look at this …

Kenley  Jansen

McCoy shot this photo last night, too. Jansen is a little farther along in his delivery, as indicated by the angle of his arms, but his toes are still pointing skyward. You would think by this point in his delivery — with his heel practically touching the ground — that the ball of Jansen’s foot would be closer to the ground. Instead the angle of his foot has barely changed, even though he’s holding the baseball close to shoulder height.

Again, a pitching coach might look at these images and diagnose nothing. Or something completely different.

In any event, it’s a safe bet that these are the type of mechanical minutiae that Jansen and Rick Honeycutt will be dissecting.

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About J.P. Hoornstra

J.P. Hoornstra covers the Dodgers, Angels and Major League Baseball for the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Torrance Daily Breeze, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star-News, San Bernardino Sun, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Whittier Daily News and Redlands Daily Facts. Before taking the beat in 2012, J.P. covered the NHL for four years. UCLA gave him a degree once upon a time; when he graduated on schedule, he missed getting Arnold Schwarzenegger's autograph on his diploma by five months.