Blue Jays vs. Orioles, April 11-13

[Randle McMurphy]

Hoffman has been impressive with his composure, control and location, and assortment of pitches. I haven’t seen a blue jays closer like this in a long time. I remember in years past certain posters would **** on me for bitching about Romano, but it was just obvious to me how shaky he was on the mound. Always had a tendency to put runners on base, only had two pitches, a fastball that despite being 98, was straight as an arrow and a slider that he had the propensity to hang at the worst possible times. His control was so inconsistent.

Hoffman has been a breath of fresh air. I see none of what made me criticize Romano, in Hoffman.

In terms of pure stuff, Hoffman is likely the best closer we've had in a while since Roberto Osuna (who could've been all-time closer for us if we wasn't such a piece of ****). Nice thing about Hoffman is that he still has the starter's repertoire when he needs.

Romano had a couple of nice seasons, but it's obvious the league started figuring him out. And like you said, he had the tendency to hang pitches in the worst spots that got punished a long way.

Honestly, osuna was pretty good but there’s a reason I didn’t even mention his name neither. Osuna was definitely better than Romano, but from what I’ve seen in Hoffman so far, he’s much better than both. His starter repertoire and control makes a huge difference for him.

Osuna had a 2.9 WAR season as a RP in 2017, which is absurdly absurd.

He was extremely good and ranks 4th all-time in WAR for Jays RPs despite only pitching for a little over 3 seasons for the organization: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&ind=0&team=14&players=0&month=0&stats=rel&startdate=&enddate=&season1=1977&season=2025

[Boogie!]

That is at least 2 wins he has gotten them so far that they wouldn’t have gotten for many years prior. Hoffman is a game changer.

Sucks to lose Springer though. That looked like something that is either going to nag all year. Or have him out a while

Hoffman has been impressive with his composure, control and location, and assortment of pitches. I haven’t seen a blue jays closer like this in a long time. I remember in years past certain posters would **** on me for bitching about Romano, but it was just obvious to me how shaky he was on the mound. Always had a tendency to put runners on base, only had two pitches, a fastball that despite being 98, was straight as an arrow and a slider that he had the propensity to hang at the worst possible times. His control was so inconsistent.

Hoffman has been a breath of fresh air. I see none of what made me criticize Romano, in Hoffman.

That would be because Hoffman is a top 3 RP in baseball (and probably the best RP they’ve had since, yeah, peak Osuna) and not because Romano is in any way bad (or at least he wasn’t until last year). Romano was great for the Jays from 2020-2023.

Even in Romano’s “good years” he suffered from the same issues that just started to get worse as the years went on… his issues were always largely the same, he just seemed to get away with them somehow because of his strikeout ability and luck. But I never trusted him against the best hitters… there’s no way Romano would’ve pulled off what we just saw from Hoffman in Boston and then tonight.

[Randle McMurphy]

Hoffman has been impressive with his composure, control and location, and assortment of pitches. I haven’t seen a blue jays closer like this in a long time. I remember in years past certain posters would **** on me for bitching about Romano, but it was just obvious to me how shaky he was on the mound. Always had a tendency to put runners on base, only had two pitches, a fastball that despite being 98, was straight as an arrow and a slider that he had the propensity to hang at the worst possible times. His control was so inconsistent.

Hoffman has been a breath of fresh air. I see none of what made me criticize Romano, in Hoffman.

That would be because Hoffman is a top 3 RP in baseball (and probably the best RP they’ve had since, yeah, peak Osuna) and not because Romano is in any way bad (or at least he wasn’t until last year). Romano was great for the Jays from 2020-2023.

Even in Romano’s “good years” he suffered from the same issues that just started to get worse as the years went on… his issues were always largely the same, he just seemed to get away with them somehow because of his strikeout ability and luck. But I never trusted him against the best hitters… there’s no way Romano would’ve pulled off what we just saw from Hoffman in Boston and then tonight.

That’s because he isn’t as good as Hoffman is (even when he was going well) but very few in baseball are. Only Tanner Scott has been more valuable out of a bullpen since the start of the 2023 season.

Romano was fine though. If his elbow didn’t fall apart, I expect the Jays would have kept him.

[JaysRule15]

The nice thing is that if this year does blow up in our face and we might decide to do a retool, Hoffman will bring back some pretty decent talent if he's healthy.

[WuTang_OG]

Hoffman is a killer