u/Legal-Cell7291

why did we let little and hoffman lose us so many games in april

The Blue Jays now sit at 21-26 after a game lost due to managerial malpractice last night, and poor bullpen deployment has been the crux of us losing close games this year. Despite Varland sporting the lowest ERA of any reliever in the league and Rogers being a reliable set up man behind him, the bullpen sports a slightly below league average ERA of 4.13. This is due to our bad relievers being catastrophically bad with Brendon Little singlehandedly losing March 30th vs the Rockies giving up 4 runs and April 4th vs the White Sox giving up 3 earned runs with 2 home runs. He also lost the game on April 1st vs the Rockies allowing the Manfred runner to score and this shows a clear trend that he cannot be placed in any medium or high leverage situation as he will blow the game himself.

Hoffman has had similar results in a larger sample size. After losing his closer duties following a disastrous outing in Arizona, he was thrown into low leverage situations where he would be limited in the impact he would have in the team's overall chances to win a game. He strikes out a lot of batters but he allows too many people on base as evident by his near 2 WHIP and his .380 wOBA which is bottom 8% in the league. Yet as of late, he has been tasked to pitch in higher leverage situations and he ended up coughing up the lead in 3 of his last 4 appearances. This shows a clear trend that he cannot be placed in any medium or high leverage situation as he will blow the game himself.

Hoffman's pitching stats after losing the closer role

The Blue Jays are losing all these close games, and they're not even doing it efficiently. They are first in the league in pitching relievers with 0 days rest and first in losses in relief. They are somehow doing this even with the team being close to top 5 in relievers pitching in low leverage situations. They have a 50% save conversion rate, good for bottom 5 in the league even though they are under the league average in save opportunities to pitch in. The Blue Jays are losing winnable games before the game even reaches the 9th inning due to poor pitching staff construction and a lack of a contingency plan in case of injuries or poor performance. We just trot out the guys that John Schneider trusts the shit out of and lose close games over and over, and he has proven that he cannot be trusted to manage the bullpen in any medium or high leverage situation as he will blow the game himself.

Team Relief Pitching: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2026-reliever-pitching.shtml

Season ticket holder who needs a break from watching this team lose to the Rays. With Cease on the mound, today should be a good game. Not currently a verified seller, but do have extensive history on the Jays subreddit and a verified account on Tickets4Fans. DM if interested!