LOS ANGELES — Jeff Hoffman had pounded his chest on the mound, he’d hugged catcher Alejandro Kirk, and he’d turned his ball cap around backward as he high-fived each of his teammates while dejected fans filed out of Dodger Stadium.
As the Toronto Blue Jays closer stood in front of his stall in the visitors’ dugout following his team’s 6-1 win on Wednesday night, he thought back to the many competitive teams he’d played on as a kid and teenager, to the many moments that led up to his third appearance in the World Series, on a stage he’d only dreamt of until recently.
“To be doing it now at the highest level, it’s hard to explain what it feels like,” Hoffman said with a grin, not long after he punched out two straight Dodgers to put the finishing touches on Toronto’s second straight win in this best-of-seven as it shifts back home.
As Hoffman and the rest of the Blue Jays boarded their plane late Wednesday, they did so a win away from a World Series championship, with a 3-2 lead against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers. With two chances to close it out on home turf in either Friday’s Game 6 or Saturday’s Game 7.
“It’s an amazing feeling, knowing we’re so close and we’re one away from everything,” said Blue Jays reliever Eric Lauer, who was spectacular in his last appearance, going 4.2 innings in Game 3’s 18-inning marathon. “But we keep saying around here, the job’s not done. We’ve still got a lot to go.”
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But first, there will be rest. For this entire Blue Jays team, the off day on Thursday is welcome news. And for Hoffman, Lauer and the other six guys in the bullpen, it’s coming on the heels of a pair of games that also afforded them the chance to recover and be at their best after Monday’s unintended double-header that saw all eight relief arms deployed.
“Everybody’s ready to go,” Hoffman said. “Obviously, Lauer could use a couple of days, and we got him that. (Chris) Bassitt’s been huge stepping into that role and eating — not just eating innings — just absolutely destroying everybody. We’re in a good spot. We feel like we are a big part of the team and we are excited to get in there.”
For the record, Lauer swears he could’ve pitched a night after his lengthy relief performance in Game 3. “I mean, this is the World Series,” he said with a broad grin, before admitting “it was nice” to have some rest.
That’s in pretty large supply not only thanks to the off day, but because of Shane Bieber’s solid outing on Tuesday that saw Mason Fluharty, Bassitt and Louis Varland combine for 3.2 innings. And Game 5 featured Trey Yesavage’s incredible seven-inning effort: The rookie struck out 12, walked none, and gave up just three hits and a single run, with Seranthony Dominguez taking care of the eighth and Hoffman shutting it down in the ninth.
It’s Varland who has appeared in more post-season games than any pitcher on the Blue Jays roster — 13 of 16, so far — and he’ll have an unusual two full days of rest before Game 6. Though Varland may not need it. “I think I naturally just recover well,” he explained earlier in the series, adding, “I don’t know what my anatomy has different than the average human being.”
So that helps, too.
“Physically, we feel really good,” Bassitt said of Toronto’s relief arms. “I think every bullpen guy is going to be available, and a lot of them are really, really fresh. So it’s going to be all hands on deck and just play our game, and then let’s see if we win one more.”
Before Game 6 back at the Rogers Centre, the plan across the board for players was, as Lauer put it: “Sleep a lot.” He had designs on an early bedtime Thursday night, in part because he had no plan to sleep on the team’s overnight flight home.
“These plane rides are special, so you gotta stay awake for them,” Lauer said. There were bottles of booze planted in Blue Jays’ stalls in the visitors’ clubhouse, but the right-hander didn’t anticipate any celebratory drinks on the flight. Instead, plenty of card games, lots of relaxing, music and hanging out with “your brothers,” Lauer said. “Just adding to the camaraderie of, you know what, we’re a family, we’re a team, this is what we do, this is how we get to relax together and hang out, and it’s just fun.”
“We’ll be relaxing — a lot of guys are still feeling that 18-inning game. It’s been a crazy three days here,” added Bassitt, who can never sleep on planes, as hard as he tries. He watches movies instead. “I know the families have had a crazy three days here, so I think everyone’s happy to get back to Toronto and just take a deep breath and get ready for Game 6,” he added.
The pitcher who could well have the ball in his hand to end that game is Hoffman, who came out of the bullpen to seal the win Wednesday. He gave up a lead-off single, then forced a pop out and punched out Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández. “I would have liked to do without the base hit, but it felt good to get it done,” the closer said. “If I’m throwing strikes, I’m happy.”
Lauer moved to the bullpen in September when Bieber joined the starting rotation, and in Hoffman he sees an “even-keeled and smooth” guy whose demeanour is well suited to what can be the most pressure-filled moments in a game.
“He doesn’t panic. He’s never worried,” Lauer said. “When it’s his turn, he knows it’s game time and he turns it on.”
“I just see a guy that has all the trust in himself that he’s going to get the job done,” Bassitt added. “Even through failures, that trust doesn’t change. He was the best closer in baseball, arguably, for two months, and then he got tired, in my opinion, didn’t play so well.
“But that never changed the perspective that we had in this room for him. And that sure as heck didn’t change his perspective of how good he thought he was. So I just think we got him some much-needed rest at the very end of the season. And then all of a sudden, Jeff Hoffman’s back to being Jeff Hoffmann. So whenever he’s coming into the game, we’re pretty damn confident that game’s over.”
Only one more game, one more win, will secure Toronto’s first World Series championship in 32 years. If you ask Lauer, the team had a feeling the season would come to this point.
“Guys always talk about when you win a World Series with a team, it’s really a brotherhood. You always have a special connection with everybody in that clubhouse, and I feel like this team all year has kind of been that way,” he said. “So I feel that’s why we always kind of knew that we would be in this situation.”
The closer with the word “Fearless” tattooed across his back has a similar feeling about his own journey back to Toronto. Eleven years ago, Hoffman was drafted by the Blue Jays, but it wasn’t until April of this year that he was brought back after nine season spent between Colorado, Cincinnati and Philadelphia.
“It’s wild the way things turn out. I’ve thought about it a lot recently,” Hoffman said. “It’s just crazy that I ended up in the place that I should have been the whole time.”
The Blue Jays closer smiled and he added: “It feels like it was a destiny type of thing.”
