DENVER — Here’s an unusual juxtaposition – exactly 10 years and seven days after the Toronto Blue Jays traded Jeff Hoffman to the Colorado Rockies in a deadline blockbuster, he returns to Coors Field to face what was once his new team as a member of his old team.
“It sounds pretty far out there,” he said with a grin.
Certainly does, especially since baseball is only four days clear of the 2025 deadline, one in which the Blue Jays added Seranthony Dominguez, one of Hoffman’s former teammates with the Philadelphia Phillies, and Louis Varland, whom he spent time with at camp with the Minnesota Twins in the spring of 2023.
Hoffman, of course, was the centrepiece acquisition for the Rockies in the July 28 trade that also sent Jose Reyes, Miguel Castro and Jesus Tinoco to Colorado, with superstar shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and LaTroy Hawkins heading to Toronto. That deal helped launch a 43-19 finish that captured the American League East and ended the Blue Jays’ 21-year post-season drought.
Recently promoted to double-A at the time, Hoffman woke up that morning expecting to make his third start for New Hampshire, in a big-time prospect duel against Harrisburg’s Lucas Giolito, when he learned of the trade, which had broken late the night before.
“I remember it being definitely a whirlwind where everything happened really fast, even down to the logistics of it,” said Hoffman. “I got traded within division in the league that I was already in, so I went from New Hampshire to New Britain, like a couple hours drive, and I was at my new team’s hotel for dinner time. I didn’t start, they pushed me back a couple days. It was weird.”
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It was also the beginning of a difficult 5½ years with the Rockies, during which Hoffman kept bouncing between the majors and minors, the developmental approach to him seemingly shifting with each trip up or down.
At the same time, the franchise, a wild-card team in both 2017 and 2018, began the sad decline to its abysmal current state, sitting at 30-81, a pace barely good enough to avoid breaking the 2024 Chicago White Sox’s record of 121 losses.
“The resources they had in place and to help guys get better and to help guys reach their full potential, I think was lacking,” Hoffman said of his experience with the Rockies. “I feel like if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards, and I definitely don’t feel like I was moving forward. It was a very plateau point in my development and obviously the atmosphere of pitching in Denver doesn’t help anything. I definitely don’t think I would be who or where I am now without all that happening, so I definitely don’t lose sight of that.
“I just think that definitely kind of halted some things that I didn’t really figure out until I got to Cincinnati.”
The Rockies traded Hoffman to the Reds after the 2020 pandemic season, and it was during his two seasons with Cincinnati that he began to find himself as a pitcher after transitioning to the bullpen.
Central to his issues with Colorado was a focus on mechanical cues that he now calls “chains (that) were put on me,” further complicated by his repertoire not matching up with the thin air in Denver’s 1,609-metre elevation above sea level.
“At that time, I was throwing a four-seam fastball, a big, like, 12-6 curveball and a circle changeup,” Hoffman explained. “Big breaking balls just don’t work there. They just spin and hang out right where the barrel is going to be, so everything that I was as a pitcher didn’t really make sense for me to be one of the guys going in that trade. Like, my whole arsenal was going to have to change at some point. But you kind of get thrown into the fire and it either works or it doesn’t and obviously it didn’t work.”
In 2019, Hoffman began to deploy the splitter that has since developed into one of his most important weapons. With the Reds, he abandoned the curveball and began using the slider that’s so effective now, the full package coming together with the Phillies in 2023.
During that time, the Rockies fell deeper and deeper into their tailspin, losing 87 games in 2021, 94 in 2022, 103 in 2023, 101 in 2024, with a new low coming this season. It’s easily the worst stretch in franchise history, with little hope for near-term improvement.
“I was on two good teams when I was there, 2017 and 2018, and it was a lot of fun,” said Hoffman. “It’s tough because they sell seats because people want to go watch a baseball game at Coors Field, it’s one of the most beautiful parks in our league. So for there not to really be a great product being put on the field there, that kind of stinks. But it’s all about what ownership wants to do and what the margins look like. If they’re not signing guys and making their team better and they’re still happy with what the margins look like, they’re not going to do that. And I think that’s part of the reason they are in the situation they’re in.”
Hoffman, having signed a $33-million, three-year deal with a Blue Jays team currently atop the AL East, will once again visit Coors Field in a much better situation.
And having once been prospect capital used by a Blue Jays team buying at the trade deadline, he experienced this year’s slate of acquisitions from a much different vantage point.
“It was really cool,” said Hoffman. “I was as excited as anyone waking up and checking every morning as the deadline was getting closer. I always think it’s funny because all the names that might be out there and whoever it is that teams are interested in, and then you have a deadline like the Blue Jays had, where you get a couple of guys flying under the radar, but as good as anybody that got traded. I always think that’s really cool. We just work here. We don’t get to see the ins and outs of all that or anything, so it’s really exciting to see when it all finally comes to fruition, who you end up getting.”
