Alex Vesia got the final out of Saturday night’s Dodgers win over the Texas Rangers, striking out the potential tying run at the plate to earn his first save of the season.
Vesia, a longstanding member of Dave Roberts’ trust tree in the bullpen, has 15 career saves, 14 of them in the regular season and another in Game 2 of the 2024 World Series. Saturday night was notable for another reason, in that it was Vesia’s 30th birthday.
That got me
to thinking, what other Dodgers recorded saves on their birthdays?
The first person I thought of was Kenley Jansen, the franchise leader in games pitched and saves. He was born on September 30, and has two such saves in his career. One of them was with the Dodgers, in 2017, on his 30th birthday, just like Vesia on Saturday.
That was Jansen’s best season, and he was fifth in National League Cy Young voting. Here’s what I wrote after that game nine years ago:
Jansen finished his 2017 with a 1.32 ERA, and 109 strikeouts in 68⅓ IP with only seven walks, just the third pitcher ever with triple-digit strikeouts and single-digit walks in a season.
Since then, two others have joined that elite group of at least 100 strikeouts and fewer than 10 walks, but five pitchers is very select company.
At first I was going through the Dodgers’ all-time saves list, but ignoring folks with saves awarded retroactively before the statistic was officially added in 1969. There were many Dodgers closers born in the baseball offseason, and they never got a chance to record a save on their birthday. But this was a tedious effort, until I remembered I could use the Stathead play index, where I sorted every Dodgers save since 1969 by age.
Only five Dodgers pitchers in total saved games on their birthdays. Here are the three others besides Vesia and Jansen.
Lerrin LaGrow
The right-hander pitched for five teams in his career, mostly the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox. In May 1979, the Dodgers acquired LaGrow for cash, and he had a 3.41 ERA in 31 games the rest of the season. He struck out 22 and walked 18 in 37 innings, which was a thing you could do at the time.
LaGrow saved four games for the Dodgers. On July 8, LaGrow’s 31st birthday, he was called in to clean up Terry Forster’s ninth inning, after Tony Pérez doubled home a run to get the Montreal Expos within 8-6. Gary Carter represented the tying run, but LaGrow got him to bounce back to the box for the final out of the game.
Tom Niedenfuer
Niedenfuer is notable in Dodgers lore, though for the wrong reasons, as his giving up game-winning home runs in Games 5 and 6 for the 1985 National League Championship Series overshadowed his half-decade of mostly excellent relief at the back end of the bullpen.
He’s the only two-time member of the birthday save club. Born on August 13, Niedenfuer earned saves on both his 26th and 27th birthdays.
On August 13, 1985, Mike Marshall hit a two-run home run in the eighth inning, giving the Dodgers a 2-1 lead over the Atlanta Braves. Carlos Diaz and Ken Howell faced the first three batters in the ninth inning but recorded only one out. In came Niedenfuer with the tying and go-ahead runs on base, and he induced a popout to second base and strikeout to finish out the win.
One year later the Dodgers were in Houston, and Orel Hershiser started the ninth inning going for a 5-0 shutout win. Things didn’t go quite has planned, with three hits and two walks bringing home three runs, after allowing only two singles in his first eight innings. Now in a 5-3 game, and with the tying runs on base, Niedenfuer was summoned from the bullpen, and he struck out Phil Garner to close out the win for his second straight birthday save.
Caleb Ferguson
Drafted out of high school in 2014, Ferguson debuted with the Dodgers on June 6, 2018, and his first four major league appearances were three starts and a four-inning relief affair. Then came soaking up two innings to close out a loss. But in his sixth major league game, the Dodgers were drubbing the Pirates 17-1, so they handed the ball to Ferguson on his 22nd birthday to finish things out.
Ferguson allowed three hits and a walk but no runs to earn a three-inning save, the most noble of these birthday saves.
