Jonathan Broxton may struggle when overworked, but he doesn’t overanalyze

Reporting from Philadelphia — Jonathan Broxton said he has never watched the tape of his blown save in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series last year at Citizens Bank Park, where the Dodgers open a three-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday night.

“Nope,” he said.

The Dodgers’ closer said he not only has tried to avoid replays of his career’s greatest heartbreaks, but also his crowning achievements. Other than TV highlights he has happened to see while channel surfing, he said, he has never watched images of himself closing out the 2008 NL division series or last month’s All-Star game.

“You can’t do anything about the past, good or bad,” he said.

And in Broxton’s view, the past can only complicate the present, which is already complicated enough.

Broxton pitched two scoreless innings Saturday night to earn a win, but has not completely emerged from the roughest stretch of his season. He has posted a 7.90 earned-run average in his last 13 games, a span in which he has blown two saves and lost three games.

“We need to get him back,” Manager Joe Torre said.

While other pitchers might spend hours in front of laptop computers to discover a mechanical flaw that might be responsible for a stretch of subpar performances, Broxton, 26, said he has no use for such modern conveniences.

Too much video, Broxton said, leads to too much thinking. He would rather keep matters simple.

“I don’t like watching it,” he said. “There’s too much to look at on video. You start criticizing everything.”

Pitching coach Rick Honeycutt is fine with that.

“If you overanalyze something, it gets hard,” Honeycutt said.

Rather than watch tape, Broxton said he prefers to listen to a familiar voice — that of bullpen catcher Rob Flippo.

When Flippo warms up Broxton in the bullpen, part of his duty is to point out to the 6-foot-4 right-hander if something is wrong with his delivery.

That the 44-year-old Flippo has had this role since Broxton was first called up to the majors in 2005 makes the task easier. So does the simplicity of Broxton’s delivery.

“When his arm’s up, everything fine,” Flippo said. “When he starts to get down a little bit, he either comes across his body or pushes. He’s really a simple fix. If you feel it coming downhill, then you’re in a good spot.”

Thrusting his hand downward to illustrate his point, Flippo said, “If his fastball does this on either side of the plate, his two-seamer has sink. His slider goes off of that. It all works off of that.”

Video is not the only form of technology Broxton said he ignores. The same is true of radar guns, which have clocked Broxton’s fastball this season anywhere from 102 mph to 89 mph.

Asked about the fluctuations in velocity, Broxton replied, “How do you know the guns are right? How can I be? Until Major League Baseball steps in and sets the guns the same, it’s going to go up and down every time.”

Flippo and pitching coach Rick Honeycutt said they are particularly distrustful of the radar guns at Dodger Stadium.

“It’s almost like the gun isn’t lined up right,” Honeycutt said. “Depending on the side of the plate or the height of the ball, it’ll register totally different.”

(Still, Honeycutt and Torre recently asked Broxton if anything was wrong with him physically. Broxton told them there wasn’t.)

Flippo said that Broxton’s approach reminds him a lot of Eric Gagne’s, particularly in the way they disregard video.

“It’s a mentality,” Flippo said. “Gagne didn’t watch that kind of stuff. He’s been the best closer I’ve been around. If he wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly, he didn’t care. He goes, ‘You’re going to have to hit my best stuff. It might be right in the middle, but you’re going to have to hit it.’ Brox is the same type of guy. He’s not going to paint. He’s going to come at you, come at you hard.”

That was not always the case, said Flippo, who points to the season Broxton spent in the bullpen with pitcher Tanyon Sturtze in 2008 as a turning point.

“When Sturtze was here, he told him, ‘Look, you’re a power guy. Even if you make a mistake, guys are going to foul those off. Get at them,’ ” Flippo recalled. “That’s when Brox really started to take off, when he realized who he was. He is a big power closer. When he has that mentality, he’s at his best.”

Although Torre said he sensed that there were times Broxton strayed from that mindset, Honeycutt and Flippo point to other factors.

As was the case with Gagne, Broxton does not like to throw in the bullpen for the sake of throwing. So if save situations do not present themselves, Broxton could go several days without throwing.

“After four, five days, you try to get him some work” and get him in a game even if it’s in a non-save situation, Honeycutt said. “But the times that we’ve done that, we’ve needed him the next three days. It’s feast or famine when it’s going like that.”

Broxton has also had to shoulder greater responsibilities because of the shortage of relievers, Honeycutt noted. Of Broxton’s four blown saves, three came when he entered the game in the eighth inning. But the emergence of rookie Kenley Jansen and the anticipated return of Ronald Belisario should allow Broxton to return to his normal role and pitch the way he pitches best.

“With the pen a little deeper, it’ll simplify his role a little bit more,” Honeycutt said. “He won’t have to be up in the eighth inning. We’ve asked a lot of multiple innings. Not that he can’t do it, but I think that sometimes affects his thought process. You want him coming out, letting everything hang out for one inning.”

dylan.hernandez@latimes.com

twitter.com/dylanohernandez

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