TORONTO — The Georgia sun was relentless at 5:00 p.m. local as it lowered towards Truist Park’s right field canopy and beamed directly into the visitors’ dugout.
It was early-October, 2023, and the Philadelphia Phillies were preparing for the second game of the NLDS against the Atlanta Braves. Covering the series for Sportsnet, I pulled aside Jeff Hoffman, the defensive end-sized right-hander who I’d first met as a 22-year-old, top-prospect starter in the Toronto Blue Jays organization and was now a 30-year-old, high-leverage reliever in the Phillies bullpen.
“I was so excited when they picked me,” Hoffman said of the Blue Jays, who selected him ninth overall in the 2014 draft. “Close to home. A team and an organization that I watched. I grew up a Red Sox fan. So, I watched them all the time growing up.”
Ultimately, a picture book story of a big-armed kid from Troy, N.Y. — just three hours from the other side of Lake Ontario — making good on all his promise, debuting with the team that drafted him, and fronting the Blue Jays rotation for years to come didn’t play out. When does it ever?
But maybe a more appropriate modern baseball story is one of Hoffman’s MLB career winding through a pair of trades, a designation-for-assignment, a non-tendering, multiple minor-league deals, a couple triggered opt-out clauses, a strongly-considered NPB opportunity, and an early-thirties breakout to lead him back to where it all began.
That’s the latest twist of fate for Hoffman, who on Friday signed a three-year, $33-million free agent deal with the Blue Jays, rejoining the organization six months shy of a decade after it traded him to the Colorado Rockies as part of a package for Troy Tulowitzki, who’s been out of the game so long he’s currently on the hall-of-fame ballot.
The contract’s value more than triples Hoffman’s career earnings, a deserved reward for a one-time consensus top-50 MLB prospect as a starter whose persistence and resolve have been repeatedly revealed as he grinded his way through four organizations to become one of the game’s most effective leverage relievers 10 seasons later.
On that day we spoke in Atlanta, 48 hours after the second post-season appearance of his life, when he put out Ranger Suarez’s fourth-inning fire by striking out Michael Harris II to help the Phillies take the first game of that NLDS — Hoffman earned a win as the pitcher of record in the process — I asked him what he’d learned about himself through the monomyth he travelled to get to that point.
“I think the biggest thing is it tested me mentally and I never wavered,” Hoffman said. “That was really the thing that I’ve taken away from this whole experience — that my work will never stop. Because my work is what got me back to this. And seeing that and seeing how that paid off for me, that’s one thing that will never change — the way I work.”
It’s easy to forget that on opening day, 2023, Hoffman was unemployed. At the end of a spring training audition on a minor league deal with the Minnesota Twins, Hoffman was informed he hadn’t made the roster and opted out of his contract. As the regular season began, he watched from home as a free agent. Days later, he joined the Phillies on another minor-league deal and went off to triple-A seeking further opportunities to prove himself.
Late that April, the Phillies summoned Hoffman to Citizens Bank Park to throw live batting practice to Bryce Harper, who was working his way back from Tommy John surgery. After flashing the stuff that was allowing him to strike out 40 per cent of the batters he faced that month, Hoffman returned to triple-A for a trio of scoreless outings before utilizing another opt-out on the first day of May, forcing the Phillies to either bring him to the majors or release him.
If it was the latter, Hoffman was going to pursue an opportunity in Japan. He already had an offer in hand. That’s how close we came to never seeing him on a major league mound again. But having witnessed the strides Hoffman made up close as he tied Harper in knots, Phillies brass thought better of letting him get away and added Hoffman to their roster.
By the All-Star break, the Phillies were regularly throwing him in leverage. Come the post-season, he was one of the most trusted arms in Rob Thomson’s bullpen. Hoffman pitched in eight of Philadelphia’s 13 playoff games that year, doing everything from entering to get one out in a huge spot with runners on, to taking over a clean seventh or eighth with a slim lead, to bailing a starter out of a jam and pitching multiple innings.
In 2024, beginning the season with a solidified roster spot for the first time in his career, Hoffman led the Phillies in appearances and innings pitched by a reliever. He produced two fWAR and posted 96th percentile marks in chase, whiff, and strikeout rate. All told, Hoffman ranks among the top-10 relievers in the game over the last two seasons in WAR, ERA, FIP, WHIP, BAA, and K-BB rate.
That last statistic — strikeout minus walk rate — is of particular importance to front offices when projecting a reliever’s future performance. That’s because a strikeout’s a strikeout and a walk’s a walk regardless of environment or team defence. The outcome is almost entirely within the pitcher’s control. And while pitchers who limit walks are great, and pitchers who pile up strikeouts are even better, pitchers who combine both are rare and incredibly valuable.
To wit — the collection of relievers joining Hoffman in that K-BB rate top-10 over the last two seasons is a who’s who of formidable late-game leverage arms:
Best K-BB rate among qualified relievers since 2023
1. Felix Bautista — 35.4 per cent
2. Robert Stephenson — 30.3 per cent
3. Cade Smith — 29.8 per cent
4. Edwin Diaz — 29.6 per cent
5. A.J. Puk — 28.3 per cent
6. Matt Strahm — 26.7 per cent
7. Josh Hader — 26.5 per cent
8. Jeff Hoffman — 26 per cent
9. Matt Brash — 25.3 per cent
10. Aroldis Chapman — 24.5 per cent
Some of what’s behind Hoffman’s late-career breakout is simple. No longer a starter, his body’s holding up better to the demands of professional pitching. Hoffman dealt with shoulder, forearm, and elbow issues that repeatedly kiboshed his attempts to find a groove with the Cincinnati Reds in 2021 and 2022. But since moving to the bullpen full-time, reworking his strength and conditioning program in the process, Hoffman hasn’t touched the injured list.
There’s also his fastball velocity, which has averaged a steady 97 m.p.h. over the last two years after fluctuating in the low-to-mid-90s throughout seasons prior. You probably don’t need anyone to tell you what a difference that makes. But consider that last year the league hit .266 with a .438 slugging percentage against fastballs thrown from 90 to 96 mph, and .220 with a .337 slug against heaters thrown 97 m.p.h. or harder.
But some factors are more complex. Such as Hoffman’s pitch mix, which has changed dramatically over the last two years. He’s ditched his changeup and curveball, added a sinker, thrown fewer splitters, and morphed his sweeper into a firmer, 87-88 mph bullet slider he’s using more often than his fastball. Over the final two months of 2024, Hoffman was throwing that slider 45 per cent of the time.
That makes a great deal of sense considering Hoffman’s slider graded as his best pitch by run value in both 2021 and 2022, producing a whiff over 40 per cent of the time it was swung at. When he was throwing it in the low 80s, Hoffman could break the pitch nearly a foot to his glove side. But the critical adjustment he made in 2023 was throwing it harder, with more gyroscopic spin — think of a spiralling football — sacrificing some of that horizontal movement to make it look more like his fastball.
The trick is that while Hoffman’s fastball rides true through the zone with one of the highest spin rates in the league, his slider breaks by half a foot with over four inches more drop than all other MLB sliders of comparable velocities and release points. So, when he tunnels effectively, Hoffman crosses wires in hitters’ brains, making the pitches look the same out of his hand before deviating late in their path to the plate.
Here’s what that looks like when Hoffman attacks the outside edge with a fastball followed by a slider:
And here are those two pitches slowed down and overlayed with one another:
Of course, that sequence works backwards, too. Here’s Hoffman setting up Seiya Suzuki with a slider away before blowing a fastball by him in the same lane:
Hoffman does the same thing here to Will Smith:
Look how long the two pitches stay on the same plane before the slider breaks away:
Now, what’s better than two pitches that are challenging to differentiate out of your hand? How about three? Another adjustment Hoffman made in 2023 was to throw his splitter a bit less, but harder, with more run. He essentially designed it to look like a low-velocity fastball before tumbling down towards his arm side as it nears the plate.
That lets him work north with his four-seamer, using all that spin to get the pitch to drop less than a hitter’s eyes expect it to, and south with his splitter, diving underneath bats being swung higher to try to compensate for the jump on his fastball.
Here’s how it looks when Hoffman elevates his fastball before burying a splitter:
And here are those pitches slowed down and overlayed with one another:
So, make that a high-spin four-seamer riding up at the top of the zone, a hard slider cutting glove-side, and a 90-91 mph splitter dropping while running arm-side away from lefties.
And, hey, why not add a 97-mph sinker that drops less than the splitter but runs more to help work into the front hip of righties? It isn’t a pitch Hoffman throws often. But it is one he has in his back pocket if he needs it.
That deep pitch mix is what makes Hoffman deployable at any time in any situation. He’s devastated right-handed hitting since 2023 — but the .225/.289/.387 line he’s held lefties to isn’t bad, either. And his K-BB rate is just as impressive against lefties (27.2 per cent) as it is against righties (25.2 per cent).
Here’s a sequence from late last year, in which Hoffman stays away from a left-handed hitter with a four-seamer, sinker, and splitter:
And here’s how those three pitches look when slowed down and overlayed:
When Hoffman tunnels pitches effectively like this, repeating his delivery and starting them in the same lane, they all look like fastballs out of his hand. And they all come out hot like fastballs, too, forcing hitters to make swing decisions earlier. But one stays up, one moves left, one ducks down, and another runs right. Hitters can only pick one to swing at.
A key element to the disguise is Hoffman’s willingness to aim for the centre of the plate and let his stuff’s natural action carry pitches off that plane in different directions. He’s started 56 per cent of his plate appearances since 2023 with a pitch in the zone; he’s earned a first-pitch strike 65 per cent of the time. Of all the pitches he’s thrown over the last two years, two-thirds have been strikes. He’s the opposite of a nibbler, which means hitters must step into the box ready to swing.
That’s how you end up with one of the highest chase and whiff rates in baseball each of the last two seasons. And a 22 per cent in-zone whiff rate — a 75th percentile mark among relievers over that span. Hoffman forces hitters to guess, and often they guess wrong. It also helps that Stuff+ and PitchingBot both grade all four of his pitches as above-average, a rarity for a reliever and a reason why some believed Hoffman could look for an opportunity to start this winter.
A return to the rotation evidently isn’t in the cards — for 2025 at least. And there’s reason to wonder if Hoffman could be as effective over four-to-five innings as he is over one-plus if he needed to sacrifice some velocity to do so. Durability would be another question for a pitcher who battled various physical issues the last time he was stretched out and this winter watched a more-lucrative deal with the Baltimore Orioles dissolve due to concerns with his shoulder.
But the $500,000 escalators in Hoffman’s Blue Jays contract for reaching each of 60, 70, 80, and 90 innings pitched in a season do leave the door open for a bulkier role. Maybe that’s somewhere in between one-inning leverage relief and a five-and-dive start. Maybe Hoffman someday turns into a one-trip-through-the-order guy, utilizing his deep mix to carry the Blue Jays through multiple innings. Maybe, as six- and seven-inning starters face extinction, he’s a good fit for the more fluid, fungible pitching staffs of tomorrow.
We’ll see. That’s a question for seasons to come. For now, Hoffman will face late-game leverage from a rebuilt Blue Jays bullpen and likely get the first crack at taking the closer’s job and running with it. Not exactly the role Hoffman, the club, or anyone at all foresaw him in when he first joined the organization out of the draft a decade ago.
Then again, forget a decade. How about less than two years ago when Hoffman was a free agent on opening day and nearly ended up overseas? For relievers these days, ever volatile in both performance and standing, oscillating careers like his are the norm. What’s different about Hoffman is he found a way to survive.
“Honestly, I feel like the biggest thing is to not treat it like anything special,” Hoffman said that day in Atlanta when I asked him about pitching in high-leverage spots. “When you take a step back and you look at the game and the stage that you’re on, it is different in that sense. But, for me on the mound, the mentality doesn’t change. It’s just pound the zone and make them swing and miss.”
