The Blue Jays got here into this offseason with one obtrusive want: relievers. Now, that’s to not say that they don’t need assistance elsewhere. The underside of their lineup is skinny. They’re most likely a starter in need of an optimum rotation, notably given how unsure Alek Manoah’s future appears. However they’re a playoff hopeful, and so they had the worst bullpen in baseball in 2024 – 3.1 wins worse than the White Sox, in the event you can consider it. So the bullpen needed to be precedence primary, and voila:
OFFICIAL: We’ve signed All-Star RHP Jeff Hoffman to a 3-year deal ??
Welcome Again, @Hoff_23! pic.twitter.com/A1tN8zOGjV
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) January 11, 2025
Jeff Hoffman won’t be a family identify, however he’s been top-of-the-line relievers in baseball since becoming a member of the Phillies in 2023. He’s racked up 3.6 WAR in that point, however reliever WAR can get bizarre with the leverage changes, so let’s put it this fashion as an alternative: He’s sixth in ERA and third in FIP during the last two years. His strikeout charge hovers round 33.3%, and he walks a completely regular variety of hitters. In different phrases, this doesn’t appear to be a fluke, and he’s not getting paid like a fluke, both. His deal is value $33 million over these three years, with $6 million in accessible incentives.
In Philadelphia, Hoffman was a part of a dominant ensemble. The Phillies have had top-of-the-line bullpens within the league every of the final two years, usually going six deep with influence arms. Toronto – effectively, Toronto has had 15 completely different pitchers accrue damaging wins above substitute. Hoffman is coming in because the clear greatest arm within the group, a very completely different state of affairs than he’s confronted lately.
To the Jays’ credit score, they didn’t simply slap Hoffman on an otherwise-unchanged bullpen and name it a day. After buying and selling final yr’s greatest reliever, Yimi García, on the deadline, they re-signed him earlier this offseason. Once they traded for Andrés Giménez in December, they secured Nick Sandlin as a throw-in. These three will all characteristic in direction of the highest of the ‘pen, hopefully absorbing innings that may have in any other case gone to meaningfully worse arms.
It’s an attention-grabbing strategy to construct a bullpen, although one which feels born extra out of necessity than need. One of the best ways to get a fantastic reliever like Hoffman is to do it earlier than he’s nice. That’s what the Phillies did once they signed him off of waivers in 2023; the Reds had launched him, as had the Twins, and Philadelphia profited. It’s so arduous to foretell which relievers will pan out – risky pitchers, small pattern sizes, and harm threat make for a troublesome guessing sport. If everybody had their druthers, they’d hold a continuously percolating pot of reliever maybes and make hay with those who pan out. You see this yearly with the Phillies, Dodgers, Rays, and Brewers. However a one-year makeover? The Jays needed to have a headliner, and Hoffman looks like a very good choice for it.
I wouldn’t fairly name Hoffman’s arsenal basic, however you’ve seen pitchers who not less than strongly resemble him earlier than. He throws a four-seamer within the higher 90s with strong vertical motion and explosive arm-side break. He enhances that fastball with a pointy, mid-80s slider. He misses an outrageous variety of bats with these two pitches, a strong sinker, and a nasty splitter. Pitch-level fashions assume the whole lot he throws is spectacular. This isn’t a case the place some lesser pitcher BABIP’ed and misdirection’ed his approach right into a yr of excellent stats; Hoffman has clearly been the true deal of late.
From that standpoint, I feel that this signing is nice. The Jays had a selected want, and so they acquired top-of-the-line pitchers accessible to start out patching issues up. I most well-liked Tanner Scott and Blake Treinen amongst free agent relievers, however solely by a hair, and I feel Treinen was at all times headed again to the Dodgers. In different phrases, the Jays are procuring on the high of the market right here, and that’s undoubtedly a good suggestion given the depths of their bullpen dysfunction final yr and their postseason aspirations within the upcoming season.
Now for the downsides. Hoffman was reportedly on the lookout for a deal that valued him like a starter, the Reynaldo López/Jordan Hicks plan. The truth is, his Jays contract makes some nods in that route — every year has $2 million in incentives for pitching 90 innings (staggered as $500,000 for 60, 70, 80, and 90 frames) — however nobody’s treating it that approach. GM Ross Atkins stated that the workforce is “excited so as to add Jeff to our bullpen” and that Hoffman “will get a possibility to shut video games for us.”
Their bullpen shortcomings imply that Toronto was certainly most concerned with Hoffman as a reliever all alongside, however on condition that starters are extra extremely compensated than relievers in free company, you would possibly count on different groups to make bigger affords to him for a beginning function. The truth is, Hoffman and the Orioles reportedly reached a three-year, $40 million deal that fell by because of considerations over his bodily. It didn’t seem like an enormous disagreement – the Orioles continued to barter with revised phrases – however I surmise that groups is likely to be skeptical Hoffman can maintain as much as the pains of full-time beginning.
There’ll certainly at all times be some threat there. However truthfully, I feel that’s largely to the nice for Toronto. If groups thought Hoffman may hack it as a starter, he most likely wouldn’t be accessible for 3 years at $11 million per yr, a discount charge for an elite reliever. Each reliever is an harm threat, and I’m skeptical that groups are so good at anticipating accidents that they will meaningfully distinguish between the completely different dangers related to otherwise-healthy gamers; Hoffman didn’t hit the IL in any respect with the Phillies for no matter that’s value.
The larger threat? It’s that relievers who pop up out of nowhere typically vanish simply as shortly. Final yr’s Jeff Hoffman was Bryan Abreu, who went from substitute stage (0.2 WAR from 2019-21) to elite (2.9 in 2022 and 2023) as an ensemble member of a fantastic bullpen. He was nonetheless efficient however hardly elite in 2024. Or perhaps it was Matt Moore, who like Hoffman was over 30 when he posted two straight good years – he was abysmal in 2024, acquired injured, and could also be out of baseball.
The yr earlier than, Collin McHugh felt like a equally apparent high reliever and reclamation mission, coming off of a two-year stretch with a 2.09 ERA, 2.43 FIP, and three.2 WAR over 133 innings. He promptly declined, acquired damage, and retired from baseball (although to be truthful, he signed a free agent deal after the primary yr of his torrid stretch and was a discount in free company even contemplating his downward trajectory). You possibly can throw Giovanny Gallegos or Ryan Tepera (elite in 2020 and 2021) into the combination. Generally relievers who flash out of nowhere return from whence they got here.
That’s the chance of lengthy offers for relievers, and that third yr of Hoffman’s contract feels dicey to me. However truthfully, I’d make this signing too if I had been the Jays, and I wouldn’t really feel even a little bit bit unhealthy about it.
The 2025 season is the yr for the Jays. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette are set to hit free company this coming winter. Toronto has dissatisfied relative to expectations in its Sons of Stars period. That is the workforce’s final probability to ship the form of outcomes that felt seemingly when Guerrero, Bichette, and Cavan Biggio hit the majors collectively. And whereas there’s at all times one thing that wants fixing, this bullpen was an enormous one thing, and it wanted fixing badly.
That’s how I’m this deal – a vital patch to a clearly poor unit. This isn’t the best way I’d construct a workforce if I acquired to start out from scratch. I’m as offered on Hoffman as I’m on any reliever coming off of two spectacular seasons, which is to say that I’m skeptical however hopeful he’ll be wonderful within the brief time period. However that third yr of his deal? It’s the distant future so far as the Jays are involved. It’s time to play for the current. Might Hoffman get damage or regress in direction of common? Clearly. However may the Jays make a extra significant enchancment for the same monetary dedication? I doubt it. This feels to me like a fantastic match between a workforce determined to compete in 2025 and a reliever whose current feels extra engaging than his long-term future.
