Column: Dodgers hoping for better results from a mostly unchanged bullpen

It was the second Wednesday of the season. A blip, really. But there is no grace period for this team, not when the expectations are high and the fan base is agitated.

So, barely one week into a season that lasts 26 weeks, the manager demanded five outs from his closer.

“I said, ‘You know what? We’ve got to win this game today,’” the manager said. “We’ve got to show people we mean business.”

On Wednesday, the Dodgers deployed closer Kenley Jansen for five outs, the first five-out save of his career. But the manager talking was Terry Collins of the New York Mets, who got five outs from Jeurys Familia on the same night.

Dave Roberts, the Dodgers’ rookie manager, said he knows and respects Collins but thought those comments had a tinge of panic about them.

“I just don’t have that in my DNA, especially eight games in,” Roberts said Thursday. “I don’t feel like I have to prove anything to anybody outside the clubhouse.”

Under pressure? After Wednesday’s game, Roberts dropped the words “must win” into his postgame news conference, nine games in.

“I just felt good about extending Kenley,” Roberts said. “You don’t want to say it’s a must-win … but that was a game we really wanted to win.”

The Mets can resolve their own angst. The Dodgers remain bedeviled by a dilemma 3 years old: Can they find a sturdy bridge between the starting pitchers and Jansen?

The early returns were ugly. The Dodgers split their first eight games, winning four and blowing leads in the other four. The bullpen put up a 6.65 earned-run average.

In the eighth game, Roberts declined to use a rested Jansen with a one-run deficit in the ninth inning, when no save situation could arise for him. In the ninth game, Roberts used him for five outs.

The Dodgers’ front office did not much care for the bullpen management of Don Mattingly, so how Roberts handles his relievers is worth watching. Still, it is the front office that handed Roberts virtually the same setup crew with which the Dodgers struggled last season.

The Dodgers’ ERA rankings among National League teams last year: second among starters, 11th among relievers. Those rankings entering this weekend: third among starters, 12th among relievers.

The first five relievers are the same: Jansen, preceded in some fashion by right-handers Pedro Baez, Yimi Garcia and Chris Hatcher and left-hander J.P. Howell.

“I think the most challenging part of roster construction is the bullpen,” said Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations.

Friedman did no significant reconstruction of the bullpen last winter, even though he is not shy about turning over the roster. That would appear easiest in the bullpen, where replacement pieces are relatively inexpensive, and no major league executive pays more attention to the margins of his roster than Friedman.

However, when the Dodgers tried to improve their collection of late-inning relievers over the winter, they thought big.

They had a trade in place with the Cincinnati Reds for the hardest thrower in baseball, Aroldis Chapman, then backed away after learning of a domestic abuse allegation against him. The New York Yankees subsequently traded for Chapman, who is serving a 30-game suspension.

The Dodgers also extended a contract offer to Darren O’Day, the premier setup man available in free agency. O’Day, whose sidearm style would have provided an effective contrast to the power arms of the other right-handers, got a four-year deal to stay with the Baltimore Orioles. His wife works as a television personality in Washington, so he engaged most seriously with the Orioles and Washington Nationals.

At that point, the Dodgers did not see the point of spending money or prospects on the remaining available short relievers, since they might be no better than what the team already had.

“We felt like, notwithstanding a few games this season, that we were in a position of strength in terms of the number of guys that would have good, solid 2016 seasons,” Friedman said.

“We have a lot of confidence in this group. We felt really strongly in spring training that, by the time this season was over, we’d look back on the bullpen as a strength of this team.”

Whether that turns out to be true depends largely on whether what we saw from Baez, Garcia and Hatcher last year reflected their true ability, or uneasy steps along the way to getting better.

“For me, that was very valuable experience for young relievers to have gone through,” Friedman said. “Our opinion is this year, we will reap the benefits.”

For Friedman, there always is a Plan B — and a Plan C, Plan D, and Plan E. The Dodgers used 21 relievers last season.

They have strength, at least in numbers. They stocked up on minor league free agents in the hope one or two might pitch well enough to help, with the pool including former major league relievers Sean Burnett, Sam LeCure, Joe Thatcher and Dale Thayer.

As the season winds on and injured starters Hyun-Jin Ryu, Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson return, the Dodgers could try Ross Stripling or Alex Wood in the bullpen. Prospects Yaisel Sierra, Frankie Montas, Lisalverto Bonilla and Jharel Cotton could help.

And, to introduce their very top prospects to the major leagues while conserving their innings, the Dodgers could call up Julio Urias or Jose DeLeon as a reliever.

“We could, definitely,” Friedman said. “Some of our reliever depth is in our starter depth.”

The Dodgers won the game in which they used Jansen for five outs, and the next two, with the bullpen putting up a combined seven scoreless innings. That might not persuade fans to trust in Friedman just yet, but every such inning helps turn the phrase “collection of zeros” from a commentary on the setup crew to a triumphant statistical accounting of its work.

Follow Bill Shaikin on Twitter: @BillShaikin