Stray Thoughts... - Hassling the Hoff

On a tough series loss, silver linings, bullpen blues, positive reinforcement, the road ahead, John Schneider, Max Scherzer, Captain Kirk, Erik Swanson, Dicky Lovelady, and more!

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Ugh. The White Sox.

As I type this the Blue Jays are in Cleveland, getting set to open an important three-game series against a Guardians team that sits just a game-and-a-half behind them in the Wild Card race. And if the Jays are anything like me… first of all, congratulations to the Jays. And secondly, they’re doing their best to forget the weekend’s disappointing mess of a visit from those lowly Chicagoans. Or, at the very least, trying to drown out a whole lot of nasty intrusive thoughts about the meaning of it all.

Because I genuinely don’t think it was terribly meaningful.

Embarrassing? Disappointing? Oh, absolutely. Good lord, absolutely. Losing a series to a team on pace for 111 losses is an awful look. Especially with crucial games in Cleveland and Boston, then at home against New York, incoming. And especially when it exposes what had already looked like potentially critical flaws waiting to destroy this team’s chances.

We saw crystal clear the lineup’s ability, despite recent improvements, to still be frustratingly neutralized for long stretches. We saw the massive hole at the back of the rotation. And we saw a wobbly, walk-happy back of the bullpen, led by a big-money closer who could probably use being moved slightly farther down the pecking order for a spell.

So… I get it. Bad stuff!

But there’s also a lot of good stuff to keep front of mind about this Blue Jays team.

No, really!

And since I was about to offer a whole bunch of that in bullet form anyway, this here seems like a perfectly natural jumping off point for today’s batch of stray thoughts—once again, “Quickly…”-style!

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Quickly…

• No, but seriously, the lineup has managed to mostly keep up the significant improvements we saw from them in May. They currently have the 12th-ranked offence in baseball by wRC+, and are out of the bottom third in terms of home runs. And since the start of May their wRC+ (117) ranks third in baseball, they’re seventh in runs scored, and in a tie for ninth in home runs. Saturday’s impressive 7-1 victory was a reminder of this, it just would have been nice to have spread those runs around a little more.

• Hey, and remember how people get themselves all lathered up when the Jays struggle to find hits with runners in scoring position, convincing themselves that the RISP numbers, when bad, show what the team is really made of? Well, the Jays are seventh by wRC+ with RISP now this season, fourth by batting average, and since the start of May they rank third and first.

• This was mentioned all over the place on Sunday, but it’s worth repeating: Adrian Houser is, despite looking absolutely like just some random dude who carved a dumb and bad Jays lineup like we’ve seen a million times before in recent years, having a hell of a season. His 2.27 ERA over six starts is sparkling maybe a little more vibrantly than it should, but his 3.44 FIP and 3.24 xERA are quite strong regardless. The lack of strikeouts (17.8%) will be a concern for teams looking at him as the trade deadline approaches—as the Blue Jays should be—and his low HR/FB rate has to be looked at with a little bit of small-sample suspicion, but Houser is doing a great job of limiting hard contact, keeping the ball in the ballpark for now, and throwing the ball harder than ever, somehow, at age 32. Something’s going on there. Hmm, maybe he’s actually Quaid.

• Bad as it feels, and looks, and smells to have lost a series to the White Sox, and as cringe-inducing as it is to even bring this up, the list of teams to have suffered the same fate this year isn’t exactly full of utterly pathetic also-rans. The Marlins certainly count as one of those, but the others to have had it happen to them—the Astros, Red Sox, Reds, Rangers, and Royals—are all in playoff races.

• The Reds, aka the only other team to have lost a home series to the White Sox this year, are above .500 despite sitting fourth in the AL Central, and did the Jays a favour by beating the Yankees 6-1 on Monday night. They’re no slouches. Nor are the three teams to have needed walk-off victories to avoid losing a home series to the White Sox this season: the Red Sox, A’s, and Mets.

• It happens, is what I’m saying. I’d also like to say that it feels very different that it happened to a Jays team that has been a very good offensive club for the last two month, rather than if it had happened, say, around this time in 2023, or at any point in 2024. That would have undoubtedly felt worse.

• Of course, it doesn’t hurt to know that the Jays really should have had the stupid series won. I mean, technically—obviously—we don’t know what would have happened in the ninth if Jeff Hoffman had simply not completely and brutally bungled his attempt to field a dribbler to first base to end the bottom of the eight—after all, Hoffman would have been pitching to start the top of the next frame, and we know how that’s been going lately—but that whole sequence was such a let down that it’s almost understandable that there was no coming back from it. Mind you, knowing this doesn’t help either. Oof. The White Sox!

• Speaking of Hoffman, we pretty much have to, don’t we? And, with that in mind, I’ll say here that I have no problem with a manager going to his closer for four outs in that situation, especially with an off-day upcoming, and him having pitched just twice in the previous eleven days. I don’t even necessarily have a problem with the closer in that scenario being Hoffman.

Demoting a brand new free agent signed specifically for multiple years to be the team’s closer is always going to be a little more complicated, politically, than fans would like to acknowledge. Those guys are always going to get more rope than anyone wants, even when in the midst of an extended and very uncomfortable rough patch. Plus, heading into Sunday’s appearance, Hoffman could have pointed to the pretty decent run of numbers he’s put up since the start of June, having allowed just two runs on three hits with eight strikeouts and two walks over 6 2/3 innings across eight appearances.

Granted, that’s some real statistical cherry picking—only once has Hoffman gone three appearances in a row without allowing a run since the start of May—and certainly not indicative of how it’s felt to watch him pitch lately, but it at least shows us that it was hardly catastrophic mismanagement to go to him there.

After the way he once again fell apart, though, it will inch a bit closer to catastrophic mismanagement if they don’t at least contemplate making a change there soon, if even just a temporary one. Of course, sometimes when you lose that spot it can be hard to get back, which only adds to the complexity of the situation. Regardless, Yariel Rodríguez would be a fun-as-hell closer with the way he’s going now. Yimi García could absolutely do the job once he’s back, too—provided he gets his velo back up to where it belongs…

• I’d have mentioned Brendon Little’s name there too, but he’s going to need to get his walk rate in order before I’m ready to put him into that conversation again. It’s been an impressive season for him, of course, but 10 walks over his last 9 2/3 innings??!? That’s wild.

• Back to Hoffman for a second because, naturally, Sportsnet’s Chris Black put together an absolutely outstanding Statcast-heavy thread about where the Jays’ closer is at. I encourage you to check it out yourself, because he does a great job of digestibly walking us step-by-step through the data that supports his ultimate theory. But if you want to cheat yourself and skip to my summary, here goes:

Hoffman simply doesn’t have his best stuff at the moment, possibly due to some kind of arm fatigue. We see it in lower-than-usual velocities on both his four-seamer (down 1.1 mph on Sunday) and slider (down 2.8 mph) that he’s been producing of late, and in his lower-than-usual arm angle. The fastball and especially the slider are pitches that have vastly better outcomes for him when they’re thrown harder, as Chris shows in his thread. And the lowered arm angle has been particularly noticeable around the times he has pitched four times in five days recently, and has negative implications for his splitter, which performs much better when he’s able to get on top of it more.

“An argument can be made that some really busy stretches (borne out of necessity by so many close games) deadened Hoffman’s arm,” Chris explains, “and when the bullets fully reload, he'll be fine.”

However, he adds, “If you’re more pessimistic, you worry about the off-season medicals from other franchises, and you worry about how he’s only pitched three times in the last 13 days, and the velo/bite still doesn't seem to be there.”

• Not what you want…

• In other words, whether Hoffman continues to be the closer may not be the manager’s decision to make. The medical staff may have the ultimate say here. Which… wait, weren’t these supposed to be positive takeaways???

• Thing is, we’ve got John Schneider out here saying things like this (via Hazel Mae): “We trust the shit out of Jeff Hoffman, and it’s easy to point blame at him. He’s been on the other side of us winning a whole lot of games, so it's a tough stretch for him, but we know he’ll come out of it, and we have a lot of faith in him.”

Completely understandable that the manager would be saying something like this, but it certainly underlines the delicate nature of the situation that he feels he has to be this firm about it. Not ideal!

• The Hoffman situation, if it does continue to unravel, will be yet another arrow in the quiver for annoying fans who’d prefer to centre themselves as victims of a front office and manager they long ago decided they hate rather than actually appreciating or acknowledging the relatively good season playing out in front of them. Oh, did you hear the winter’s acquisitions have not yet contributed much to this team with an unexpectedly strong hold on a playoff spot at the moment? Shut the fuck up.

OK, that’s a bit harsh. The lack of production from the big-ticket additions is a valid thing to bring up and wrestle with, for sure. They could have made different choices in the offseason and possibly been even better than they have so far. I just believe that a lot of people very transparently point this kind of stuff out because for some reason they feel the need to keep validating their deeply negative opinion the front office despite the season going fairly well. Otherwise, I’d like to think that more would be framing it as, “Wow, they’ve been this good and there should be more contributions to come from some really talented guys as the season progresses.”

Anyway! Speaking of…

• The problem that has been the back of the rotation, which was certainly on display against the White Sox on Friday, will soon have a solution. Or, at least, part of one. At least… theoretically.

Max Scherzer is scheduled to take the ball in Cleveland on Wednesday, which is tremendous news for every Jays fan with the capacity to actually wait for the Bad Thing to happen before reacting to it rather than lapsing into dead certain Atkins-hating doomerism as a defence mechanism before it even has a chance to.

Mind you, Scherzer has been doing those other types no favours with his whole “honesty” thing about the thumb issue that’s kept him on the injured list since March. After his rehab start in Buffalo last week we heard that Scherzer was experiencing “expected” levels of soreness, and back on Sunday, he told Hazel Mae and Shi Davidi of Sportsnet that he’s “trying everything (he) can” to manage the injury, but “there’s no knowing, just have to get out there.”

Not exactly striking a confident pose about your short-term health there, Max. Though I definitely wouldn’t say his approach is any worse or better than, say, having the manager cover for a player by insisting everything is entirely fine and he has the organization’s full trust. *COUGH*

• The reality with Scherzer is that he simply may not have many bullets left. And as we move into the second half of his age-40 season, with another year of pain management and long IL stints perhaps not looking so enticing to him from here, perhaps the time is coming where he chooses to simply keep going out there until he can’t do it anymore, and worries less about the long term.

I mean, maybe he’s already there. And I’m certainly not going to say that he should take a route like that—it’s his arm and his career, obviously. But if this is looking like his last rodeo, he doesn’t seem to me like the type to want to one day look back thinking he left something in the chamber.

• Alternately, Scherzer may end up going straight back onto the injured list. That possibility probably won’t ever be out of our minds at this point. But, man, it sure would be fun if he can string a few good starts together and start building some real momentum—both on the mound and in terms of fans’ belief in him.

• An offseason move that probably isn’t getting talked about nearly enough is the five-year, $58 million extension the club inked with Alejandro Kirk back in late March. Kirk has been phenomenal on both sides of the ball, and I’d currently be writing about his defensive contributions on Sunday, including throwing out Luis Robert Jr. to end a threat in the fourth, and a crucial block in the eighth that ended up not being as consequential as it should have been. But another thing about Kirk, which relates back to his deal, is the fact that he will finish this season with just over five years of MLB service time.

In other words: next year would have been his walk year if the extension hadn’t happened. And, oh man, am I ever glad we aren’t having to talk about that right now.

I have to imagine the Blue Jays feel the same way, too.

• Considering how otherworldly Cal Raleigh has been for the Stupid Seattle Mariners this season, this—via

TJStats

—is pretty nuts. (Tyler Heineman’s wacky year has a lot to do with it too, of course. But still!)

• Sticking with Locomotive Kirk, Blue Jays Nation takes a look at some of the changes he has made that have got him driving the ball with more authority than he was last season.

• Back to Nick for a second, because late last week he wrote for Sportsnet about what has been working for the Jays so far this year—Kirk very much being a part of that—and whether it’s sustainable. (We discussed this topic back on Friday’s edition of Blue Jays Happy Hour, too.)

• Speaking of that pod, I titled it Erik’s Swan Song because, of course, the Jays had just designated reliever Erik Swanson for assignment, which naturally gave us the opportunity to relitigate the Teoscar Hernández trade a bit. Well, word became official here on Tuesday that Swanson has been released by the club. End of an era. Godspeed, Swanny.

• The decision to release Ryan Yarbough back on the eve of the season was not quite as straightforward as the purely performance-based one that just befell Swanson—Max Scherzer was ready at the time to take the ball in the rotation, Yariel Rodríguez was at that point the long man, there was guaranteed money that would be involved, the spot Yarbrough would have taken was better suited for a player with options who could be shuffled to Buffalo and back, etc., etc.—but even with that context it’s not exactly been a great looking one for the club. Yarbrough has been a useful guy for the Stupid Yankees over 55 1/3 innings, producing a 3.90 ERA (though just 0.2 fWAR) in 16 appearances so far, eight of which have been starts.

However! That decision looks slightly better for the Jays this week, not because of anything Yarbrough has done, but because one of the players who was on the club’s Opening Day roster instead has decided to change his name. I mean, it’s one thing to have to tell people you ditched Yarbrough for Richard Lovely, but it’s a wholly different on to say that it was for Dicky Lovelady. Lean into it I guess, my man.

• Outstanding advice here. No notes.

• Fun stuff from Rob Longley of the Toronto Sun, who talks to Sportsnet’s Joe Siddall—who he calls the heir apparent to Buck Martinez in the Jays’ broadcast booth, though is quick to point out that Buck has no plans on leaving anytime soon—about the evolution of his gig. He also give Joe the chance to pass along a great quote from Buck that helped him get to this point.

“Buck and I were taping an intro and 10 or 20 seconds in I butchered it and it was ‘OK, Take 2,'” Siddall recalled of that day in the Rogers Centre TV booth where he was moved up from the radio booth as a fill-in for Pat Tabler. “Then 20 seconds into the next one, I butchered that one as well and it was on to Take 3.

“Finally, Buck just looked at me and said ‘Put your (bleeping) paper down, look in that camera and pretend you’re talking to your son about baseball.’

“The light bulb went on and it just freed me up. It was early on but to this day I say it was a turning point for me.”

LOL!

• Since we’re speaking about broadcasting stuff, I’d like to say that I really enjoyed Caleb Joseph’s recent work in the booth as well. We truly are spoiled around here… you know, as long as we ignore the fact that the radio guys don’t go on the road with the team.

• Hey, and speaking of the radio broadcast, I’ve happened to be in the car more often during games this year than I can ever remember—actually having a car is probably the biggest reason for that (please keep subscribing btw!!)—and I’d like to say that I’ve really enjoyed those broadcasts as well. I’d like to say that, because the crew in the booth does a great job. But holy piss, I sure as hell could use never hearing Mike Piazza reacting to the first Mets game after 9/11 or the definition of “oppo taco” again.

CHANGE YOUR RADIO ADS MLB AT-BAT APP, I AM BEGGING YOU!

• Reminder to myself: It’s not just Jays fans.

• Today in “things you love to see”…

• Whatever the Jays did over the last year or so to shore up things on the pitching development front, it sure seems to be working…

• Despite recent layoffs that included Travis Sawchik, theScore is still producing baseball content—not sure where I’ve heard that before?—including this recent piece from Tom Ruminski, who sat down with Addison Barger for a Q&A.

• It hasn’t quite been published yet at the time I’m writing this here on Tuesday afternoon, so I can’t provide a link, but very soon there should be a fresh Future Blue Jays newsletter from Doug Fox, who will be bringing us his recent conversation with Jays farm director Joe Sclafani. Definitely check it out once it does go up!

• Alright, lastly, Kiley McDaniel and Jeff Passan of ESPN have just posted their list of the top 50 trade deadline candidates, giving their take on the best guys available, the likelihood of each being dealt, and the best fits for them. The Jays are listed as a fit for just about every—if not literally every—starting pitcher, including being the top fit for Zac Gallen and Merril Kelly of the Diamondbacks, Luis Severino of the A’s, and the Rangers’ Tyler Mahle. Oddly, they’re not listed on any of the hitters available, or any of the few relievers.

I think they could use a hitter and a reliever, personally! And, yes, of course, a starter, too. But hey, all those guys that will be coming back from the injured list soon? They’re sort of like getting big trade deadline acquisitions without having to give up anything, huh? Huh? Huh huh huh JP Ricciardi huh? HUH?

Anyway, most important of all, none of the Blue Jays’ players are listed as guys likely to be moved. Yes, it’s almost July and the 2025 Jays aren’t considered sellers. Not sure I ever believed we’d really see this day, to be honest.

Now they ought to go out and make a dang statement in Cleveland that puts the stupid White Sox thing behind them and all but ensures they’ll remain in that conversation for the next six weeks! Let’s GOOOOOOO.

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