The Los Angeles Angels had a reliable closer last year, and now they don’t. The Angels took a big gamble in the offseason, punting on re-signing Kenley Jansen, who had an excellent season in the final steps of what’s likely to be a Hall of Fame career.
Instead the Angels are conducting tryouts for their new closer, and former Los Angeles Dodgers closer Kirby Yates is considered one of the leading candidates, even though he’s 38 and coming off a bad season with the Dodgers.
There are some reasons for optimism with Yates, however, according to Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com. His new manager, Kurt Suzuki, is familiar with Yates’ track record, and they also share a common heritage, with both Yates and Suzuki being from Hawaii.
It’s kind of a brotherhood,” Yates said prior to Monday afternoon's 5-4 win over the Royals at Tempe Diablo Stadium. “He’s not that much older than me, but in baseball years, he is. Even when he was at Cal State Fullerton and got that big hit, I was back in Hawaii and it was really cool to have a Hawaii boy do all that. Everybody followed his career from then on and he’s definitely somebody I looked up to. So it's really cool to have him as a manager and get to play for him.”
But Suzuki’s focus is more on the baseball side as camp begins. He played for 16 years as a big-league catcher, so he’s seen some of Yates’ biggest seasons, including 2019 when he was named an All-Star with the San Diego Padres, and in 2024 when he got that same honor with the Texas Rangers.
“I'm a big fan,” Suzuki said. “Obviously, he's from Hawaii and we brought that up. But just watching Kirby pitch in big situations, he was one of the best closers in the game for a long time. Last year, he dealt with injuries and mechanical issues, but he’s in a good place right now, mentally and physically.”
Yates is also reuniting with his old pitching coach from Texas, Greg Maddux. Maddux has seen the closer have success before, so he knows what to look for when Yates is on the mound.
“It’s a good thing just to have somebody that's familiar with me, especially when I was throwing the ball well with him,” Yates said. “He can kind of pick apart some things pretty quickly. He's already said a few things to me, which made sense and we've already kind of been working on them.”
The downside of this particular competition is that auditioning new closers in spring training is basically a slow crawl. There aren’t a lot of high-leverage situations to go by—in fact, you could make the argument that there aren’t any given that it’s spring training.
Yates has made two appearances so for, and he’s allowed one run on three hits while striking out three. His velocity is down a bit on his four-seamer and splitter, but this is just the build-up period. The competition includes relievers Robert Stephenson, Jordan Romano and possibly Ben Joyce but it’s a good sign that Yates is healthy as he seeks to get back to where he was with the Rangers.