Jonathan Broxton Is Your 2011 Dodgers Closer

Unclear if Don Mattingly had also been thinking about this one since last fall, but Jonathan Broxton is the Dodgers' closer going into the 2011 season:

PHOENIX -- Manager Don Mattingly reiterated Wednesday that Jonathan Broxton is the Dodgers' closer.

"It's because of who he is and the success he's had," Mattingly said of Broxton, who saved last year's All-Star Game but also lost his job in August to Hong-Chih Kuo, whose brittle elbow prevents him from assuming the job full time.

"Sometimes things start snowballing and it's hard to get out of that. All we can do is learn from our mistakes and move forward. If I'm him, I don't want to keep talking about the past. I think he's in a good frame of mind."

For the record, Mark McGwire didn't want to keep talking about the past, either. Yet there he was, five years later, talking about the past.

Although Broxton's fastball lost several miles an hour last year, management is convinced his problem isn't the arm but his confidence. Mattingly began working on that when last year ended, and if he has a Plan B should Broxton wobble again, he's not saying.

"I don't want to get into hypotheticals," he said. "I'm counting on him pitching good, and I told him that. I'm not concerned with anything that happened last year. I'm counting on Jonathan being the closer and pitching well and being what he's been his whole career."

Is he pitching good or pitching well, Donnie? Your grammatical inconsistency is going to drive me crazy this next year. And I mean crazy in a good way. And in a well way.