Jeff Hoffman made up for all his regular season shortcomings with Game 6 performance

It always seems as though the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays preform the best when their backs are against the wall, and the same goes for Sunday night's closer Jeff Hoffman. Hoffman, who's regular season had peaks in the sky and valleys in the gutter, may have just made up for all of his shortcomings with his massive shut down innings in the eigth and ninth.

He ran up his ERA to 4.37 this season, but when you're preforming in the postseason, when the lights are the brightest, that doesn't mean a thing.

Jeff Hoffman made up for all his regular season shortcomings with Game 6 performance

In the eigth inning, the heart and soul of the 2025 Mariners was due up, with switch-hitting catcher Cal Raleigh leading off, then switch-hitter Jorge Polanco and lefty Josh Naylor to round it out. This happened to be the exact same order due up in the eigth in Game 5, although the margain they led by was slimmer.

Hoffman ended up getting two massive strikeouts, sitting down Raleigh with a high heater and Polanco with a 90 mph splitter in the dirt. To end the inning, Naylor weakly popped up to Myles Straw to end the eighth on 15 pitches.

Hoffman once again struck out the first two batters of the ninth. This time, the two strikeouts on Randy Arozarena and Eugenio Suárez came via two phenomenal sliders that both painted the outside corners, inducing a couple of foolish swings. He then walked J.P. Crawford but got a pop out from Dominic Canzone to let the Blue Jays see another day.

In two combined innings for Hoffman in Game 6, he ended up fanning four, without allowing a hit or an earned run in the process of securing the biggest win that the city of Toronto has seen 1993. What made his appearance special, was his pitch mix, that looked a little different than in previous outings.

His four-seam fastball, which he threw 39% of the time in the regular season, was used only 31% of the time during his two innings of work. His splitter though, we used 40% of the time, compared to just 23% during the regular season. His slider looked dominant last night as well, as per usual considering it's his best pitch. In Game 6, his slider generated whiffs at a clip of 71%.

Although Hoffman threw a season high 35 pitches on Sunday night, he'll still be available for Game 7. It'll be all hands on deck, including Gausman, Bassit and Scherzer ready out of the bullpen. They will all have their cleats on, as Game 7's always seem to be bullpen adventures.

After what felt like a managerial meltdown on Friday night in Seattle, it seemed crucial that John Schneider didn't lean too much on matchups or trotting out a reliver that the Mariners "hadn't seen in awhile". Instead, he leaned on his best arm in the back-end of the bullpen, Jeff Hoffman.