Fuelled by velo slap, Varland emerges as Blue Jays’ bullpen ace

TORONTO – Graham Johnson first noticed the two-handed back smack Louis Varland gets on his way out of the bullpen during the Toronto Blue Jays’ visit to Minnesota last June. He’d seen the unusual practice, known as a velo slap, before, but only on pitchers seeking an adrenaline surge while chasing personal bests on the radar gun during off-season training. Seeing a pitcher get one before a big-league outing was a first, which is why it immediately came to mind for him seven weeks later, when the righty who has since emerged as one of the sport’s most dominant relievers was acquired from the Twins at the deadline.

“Wonder if he's going to want that here, is that a him thing, or was that just whatever,” the Blue Jays bullpen coach remembers joking with pitching coach Pete Walker and assistant pitching coach Sam Greene. “Louis didn't do it the very first outing with us. And then the second one, he had talked to Drop (Alex Andreopoulos, then a bullpen catcher) about doing it … and Drop just kind of shoved him.

"I was like, all right, I know what this is. So that game ends, I go to him, ‘Do you need me to do the velo slap?’ He's like, ‘Yes, that was terrible.’ We've done that ever since.”

The two-handed smack to the meaty part of Varland’s upper back – “It gets the hands pretty good – it lights me up so it can't feel great for him,” said Johnson – has become his signature sendoff en route to what are usually the highest leverage outs, be they in the ninth inning or otherwise, of any given game.

In that sense Varland has become the de facto closer for the Blue Jays, but the better way to think of the 28-year-old from St. Paul, Minn., is as the reliever the team wants for what projects to be the most difficult late-game assignment. Often that’s in the ninth inning, as evidenced by his 11 saves, but it very well might be earlier, like on May 27 when he handled the eighth and Tyler Rogers the ninth in a 2-1 win over the Miami Marlins.

“My process when we check our work, it's how often did you have your top choice in the highest leverage spot of the game,” explains Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “It doesn't always work out that way. There are roles to fill through a little bit. But if you're hitting a really good pocket with your best reliever at the highest part of the game, usually the outcome is pretty good.”

Based on leverage index, which measures the pressure of the situation relievers enter into with 1.0 being average, Varland’s usage checks that box with a score of 1.92, easily tops on the Blue Jays outside a pair of small-sample size anomalies. To contextualize the, Rogers is second at 1.49, followed by Jeff Hoffman at 1.42, Braydon Fisher at 1.36 and Mason Fluharty at 1.11, a clear depiction of the Blue Jays’ circle of trust.

Varland’s dominance thus far – a 0.50 ERA with a WHIP of 0.981 and 46 strikeouts in 35.2 innings across 32 games – has produced an fWAR of 1.7 that’s tied with Cade Smith, a tick behind Mason Miller’s 1.8 for the lead among big-league relievers. That should make him a top contender for the American League side of the new Reliever of the Year awards the Baseball Writers’ Association of America is voting on for the first time in 2026.

The premium placed on the ninth inning means accumulating saves will likely be key to winning the award. But the Blue Jays’ approach to Varland opens an interesting window into different ways of assessing who is the best reliever in a given season.

"There is something about pitching the ninth inning, you have to have the head space to to do it, whether it's three runs or whether it's one run,” Schneider concedes. “But I think the reliever that comes in for the highest leverage spot of the game most consistently is probably your most valuable reliever. When a guy comes in with a three-run lead in the ninth inning and gets a save, it's usually a lower leverage spot than maybe the sixth or the seventh, where the lead changes or something like that. So I think it’s a guy that can be flexible for those spots, miss bats and be durable, which is very, very important.”

Walker, the longtime Blue Jays pitching coach, agrees about the ninth inning, noting how “it's mentally more difficult," but, he quickly adds, “I still think the leverage index is huge.”

Elements that should be factored into assessments of relievers, he argues, include “guys that can go multi-inning in high-leverage situations, not just for a save, it could be the seventh or eighth inning. Guys should be rewarded, as well, for coming into a jam, getting out of it and going back out, with what that does (for a team’s chances of winning a game) and how tough that is mentally, physically. … There are some closers that won't do that.”

Varland, of course, does which is why Schneider, obvious bias noted, says, “I would vote for Louis. It's like, OK, are you going to close? Great, you can do that. Are you going pitch the eighth inning against this part of lineup that we want you to face? Great, you can do that. Can you do it again the next day in a different role? Great. Can you strike a guy out, righties and lefties? Great. He's what you're shooting for.”

Due to his mixed usage, and late start getting ninth-inning assignments with Hoffman handling the role at the beginning of the season, Varland is tied for 10th in the majors with 11 saves. Cleveland’s Smith, the dominant righty from Abbotsford, B.C., leads at 21 with Tampa’s Bryan Baker and San Diego’s Miller next at 18.

While Varland says “everybody in a bullpen wants to close games,” he approaches his varied usage with “a shut-up-and-pitch-when-you're-told mentality.”

“All the other stuff is kind of noise,” he continues, “so it’s just doing what you're told and believing in it. If you believe in it and you do it, then things should work out.”

He’s done that since joining the Blue Jays and things very much have, with his handling of left-handed hitters making a drastic jump, from .254/.290/.426 a year ago to .200/.257/.246 so far. An improved changeup that he threw only five per cent of the time to lefty hitters in 2025 but is up to 16 per cent usage this season, “has made a good difference,” he says, adding “I think that's really stepped my game up.”

Unchanged is the insistence on a velo slap on his way out to the mound.

The first time he tried one came during the COVID year of 2020, when the 15th round pick by the Twins in 2019 spent the summer training with no minor-league season.

“I used to do it when I was doing velo sessions, trying to chase velo. After COVID I didn't do it,” he said. “It's supposed to spike some adrenaline, wake you up, get you kind of ready, I guess.”

At spring training last year, “I started to do it again just as a joke. Then it turned out I liked it, so then we just kind of kept doing it.”

Justin Topa, Varland’s teammate with the Twins last year who is now pitching at triple-A Buffalo in the Blue Jays system, recalls how Colby Suggs, Minnesota’s bullpen coach at the time, “let him have it one of the days, he pitched well and then it kind of stuck.”

“I've never been a big velo slap guy. If it works for some guys, it works for them,” adds Topa. “But, Louis, I don't know if he was superstitious after having it go well the first time, but he kept rolling with it and it definitely amps him up. It's fun to see somebody get in that zone and go out there and dominate.”

There’s an art to the practice, as Varland insists that the slappers really let it rip. The first attempt at it with the Blue Jays didn’t go well as Andreopoulos “did a terrible job, so he got fired right away.”

“I wasn't going to bring it back until (Johnson) was like, ‘You want to keep doing it?’ So I'm like, yeah, I might as well,” adds Varland, who instructed Johnson to slap him as hard as he can, even though, “I think he still holds back. I can't break a rib doing it. That'd be a big problem. So, there's kind of like a balance to that.”

Johnson sheepishly acknowledges that he doesn’t give the slap a full go, and adds that “you try not to make it too direct – you want it to be fingers to the palm so it's not full impact.” But last year, if Varland had a rough outing, Ty France, who also came over from the Twins in that July 31 trade, “would come and blame me, like, ‘You're not hitting him hard enough, you've got to hit him harder.’ Ty would stay on me to make sure that I did. He's like, ‘My guy is getting soft, you've got to go harder.’”

Schneider didn’t notice the velo slap until Game 1 of the American League Division Series, when Varland came in with the bases loaded and two out and struck out Giancarlo Stanton to protect a 2-1 lead.

“It fits him,” says the manager. “It's the life of a reliever where it kind of wakes you up a little bit. It's not as crazy as the dude (Tyler) Phillips for Miami who slaps himself in the face. But relievers are just weird. I kind of like it actually. Graham has kind of mastered it, too, where he knows exactly like how down to go so he's not hurt. It's pretty funny that it's Graham hitting Louis. They're both like the most mild-mannered guys.”

Until it’s time to take the ball, that is, when they partner up for one of the sport’s more unique rituals.

“More people should do it,” says Varland, who enjoys the burst of energy he gets from the impact. “It could be a placebo, but that's the idea behind it.”