Crucial Blue Jays WPA stat only further proves Jeff Hoffman needs to go

The eye test alone can tell you things haven't been good for Jeff Hoffman this year. The Toronto Blue Jays reliever has already been removed as the every day closer - though he is still getting save opportunities and coming up short in those chances.

The latest example came from this past Saturday when the Blue Jays were in Baltimore. The Orioles staged a five-run ninth inning rally, with most of the damage coming against Hoffman. The Orioles went on to win the game and the Blue Jays were left scratching their heads, wondering what else could they do to get the best version of Hoffman.

He has struggled in the ninth inning. He has struggled in high leverage. He's been hit hard against the middle of the opponents lineups. So the Blue Jays put him in arguably the lowest leverage spot of that day as the Blue Jays added some runs on the board from earlier in the contest to hand Hoffman a 5-1 lead.

While it was his first blown save in a while - and he had actually been successful in his two save opportunities prior to the one in Baltimore - there's one metric that is showing that he's been a detriment to the Blue Jays chances of winning ball games this season, and that's Wins Probability Added. Hoffman has the third worst WPA in all of baseball at -2.03.

To make matters worse, Louis Varland, the guy that has stepped in to fill Hoffman's work load as the closer, has been worth +2.81 WPA, which essentially means the two wins that Varland has added to the team have been erased by the two wins that Hoffman has taken away. It's not an exact replication of that measure but it does explain, somewhat, why the Blue Jays are 29-32 (going into Jun. 3). If Hoffman was simply at 0 WPA and everything else stayed the same, you could argue that the Blue Jays would at least be two wins better than they are right now.

What can the Blue Jays do with Hoffman?

National analysts are now asking the question, "what exactly can the Blue Jays do with Hoffman going forward?" In fact Baseball Tonight podcast host Buster Olney touched on this in a recent interview on TSN.

“Let’s face it, this is a situation where I think that if he wasn’t making the money that he’s making, they probably would have less patience,” Olney said of Hoffman’s struggles. “They would be more aggressive in making hard decisions on where he is. Typically when someone is making a good chunk of change the way that Jeff is, they are going to give him every last chance and they’re going to do everything they can for him to turn it around.

Olney continued, “We saw him have some success working in a middle relief role after he was first demoted from the closer role, maybe they go back to that. It’s a lot of money to eat if you let him go right now, especially with the volatility of relief pitching.”

And that's why the Blue Jays are between a rock and a hard place. Hoffman's baseball savant page is glowing red. He's in the 99th percentile in chase percentage, whiff percentage and strikeout percentage. However, he's allowed 35 hits in 25.2 innings pitched, giving up 18 earned runs.

The Blue Jays must feel like things will even out. That Hoffman will get some of that batted ball luck to go his way and that not every hit will find a hole, or be hit for extra-bases. Again, he's had stretches where he looks like the guy that people were happy to see when he signed a three-year $33 million contract ahead of the 2025 season.

But the inconsistency is getting to be too much and it's time the Blue Jays drew a line in the sand and put Hoffman strictly into low leverage, inning eating roles. It's a lot of money to pay for a guy to essentially do what they were hoping their Rule 5 Draft Pick could do - but that's just the way this season has gone for Hoffman.

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