TORONTO — Jeff Hoffman wants to be on the mound when games are on the line, finding what he calls “comfort in the chaos” of the ninth-inning crucible. The Toronto Blue Jays, after signing the free-agent righty for $33 million over three years with incentives that can push the package up to $39 million, intend to give him the opportunity to do precisely that.
If he can take the closer’s role and run with it, he’ll have a major impact on a bullpen that collapsed from 4.6 WAR in 2023, as calculated by FanGraphs, to minus-2.5 WAR last year.
The general volatility of relievers, however, means that’s no given, a reality amplified in Hoffman’s case by the flags raised during physicals with Atlanta and Baltimore that derailed previous agreements. During an introductory Zoom call with media Wednesday, Hoffman conceded that those fateful MRIs “tested us a little bit,” but brushed off their findings as a “non-issue” that are “not any bit in line with the way I feel,” an assessment the Blue Jays clearly shared.
And the 32-year-old expects to remain the consistent and elite late-game force he was for the Philadelphia Phillies the last two years, freed from what he describes as the physical chains he experienced at the beginning of his career.
“Something that I've done more recently has been to drop the whole mechanical conversation,” Hoffman said, explaining his pathway to consistency. “I'm truly out there just moving in space the way that my body wants to move and there aren't really any mechanical cues or mechanical thoughts going through my head at any given time. I'm out there just doing what the task is and not really thinking anything other than that. That's been a way that I've been able to simplify and just focus on competing. The consistency, you can see it in the numbers, it's been a life-changing and a career-changing choice that I made to drop all that stuff and just and just be me.”
That pitcher is very different than the one the Blue Jays originally drafted ninth overall in 2014 and used a year later as the centrepiece to acquire Troy Tulowitzki from the Colorado Rockies ahead of the trade deadline.
Hoffman was a starter back then, working with mechanics that both led to uneven performance and put undue stress on his body, eventually leading to shoulder and forearm injuries.
By the time he reached a crossroads in the spring of 2023, released at the end of camp by the Minnesota Twins and latching on with Philadelphia as an opportunity in Japan beckoned, he’d learned to better manoeuvre his body and more effectively use his repertoire, locking in on a fastball and slider, complemented by a splitter mostly for lefties and a sinker, all fired from the same slot.
The Phillies selected his contract on May 4, 2023, and he’s shoved since.
“Something I've learned over the past nine, 10 years has been the more you can get pitches to fly together for longer throughout their flight, the better off you're going to be and the harder it's going to be for the hitter to make the decision,” said Hoffman. “We stuck with the pitches that were going to fly together more consistently.”
Hoffman posted a 2.41 ERA in 52.1 innings over 54 games two years ago and then was even better last year, when his ERA was 2.14 in 66.1 innings over 68 outings, earning him an all-star nod. And while his strikeouts-per-nine remained stable year-over-year at 11.9 and 12.1, his walks per-nine went down from 3.3 to 2.2.
The Blue Jays are banking on that to continue at the back of a bullpen they’ve rebuilt around him, a reunion with Yimi Garcia and the addition of Nick Sandlin, joining incumbents like Chad Green, Erik Swanson, Ryan Burr and lefty Brendon Little.
Making such a big financial commitment to Hoffman — who gets a $5 million signing bonus and salaries of $6 million this year and $11 million in each of the next two years, plus bonuses of $500,000 in each season for reaching 60, 70, 80 and 90 innings pitched — is out of character for the Blue Jays under GM Ross Atkins. Prior to Hoffman, the biggest payout he’d made to a reliever was the $21-million, two-year option exercised on Green last year.
This time, once Hoffman’s agreements with Atlanta and Baltimore — the latter of which was for $40 million over three years, according to a source — came undone, the Blue Jays pounced, elbowing out the Orioles, who kept bidding for him, and others.
When their “team docs got their hands on me and everything for the actual physical orthopedic exam, there was really nothing to worry about,” said Hoffman. “My body's moving great. Range of motion, everything is normal for me, as it would be mid-season, any of that stuff. They're not as concerned with what the image shows and they're just more concerned with how the player feels. That's all that matters to me.”
All that matters now for the Blue Jays is that their medical staff got this right — physicals can be interpreted in different ways and represent degrees of risk, sometimes tied to expected usage — and at the big-league level, they’ve done a good job of keeping pitchers healthy.
Doing so with Hoffman should go a long way in stabilizing the ninth inning, a vacancy created when Jordan Romano was non-tendered, leading to an $8.5-million, one-year deal with the Phillies, in what became an unplanned closer swap, even if the new Blue Jays reliever is taking nothing for granted.
“That's definitely something that needs to be earned,” he said. “That's a big, important job and that's definitely something that I want to be able to pitch myself into.”
The job is there for Hoffman in a bullpen that so badly needs him.
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