Ranking Blue Jays' realistic options to replace Jeff Hoffman as closer immediately

It looks like the Toronto Blue Jays are getting less and less comfortable with the idea of Jeff Hoffman as their closer. Over the last four outings, the 33-year-old has been mostly uninspiring with a blown save, a loss, and was replaced in the ninth. He also had one dominant outing mixed in as well.

Such is the volatility of any relief pitcher, but when the Blue Jays are desperate to get back to .500 and erase what's been an ugly opening few weeks, there has to be way more certainty from the back end than what Hoffman has brought so far in 2026. That's likely why they are looking at alternative options.

Consider that on Saturday against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Hoffman entered in a tie game in the bottom of the eighth inning and promptly gave up a grand slam that resulted in the Diamondbacks win. This preceded a blown save in Milwaukee four days earlier. After he gave up the slam in Arizona, he received some words of encouragement from manager John Schneider indicating he still had full faith in Hoffman to be the ninth inning guy. Since those words were spoken, Hoffman had a three strikeout save in the ninth inning of Monday's win, but then was pulled before disaster struck in Tuesday's contest.

That's when Hoffman entered the game against the LA Angels with a 4-1 lead. He struck out the leadoff hitter, before giving up a single, hitting back-to-back batters, and allowing (thankfully only) a single to Yoan Moncada that cashed in a run. With the score 4-2 and the bases still loaded with only one out, Louis Varland came into the game and induced a 4-6-3 double play to get out of the jam and give the Blue Jays their second straight win.

So here we are with Hoffman not only coming out in the eighth inning in one game and being pulled from the ninth in another, but we now have some real physical results to look at in terms of someone else on the Blue Jays being given a shot to close out games. And the list almost starts and ends with that one name, Varland.

Varland the one option as Hoffman's replacement, but it's not a perfect fit

There are other options that we will get too, but here's the pros and cons of Varland being used as the Blue Jays closer going forward. The pros are, he's been virtually perfect this season. In only 12 games he's been worth almost a full bWAR - as a reliever! He's thrown 13 innings, has 19 strikeouts with three walks, eight hits and three runs allowed (all unearned). Batters have a .190/.239/.214 slash line against him. The hard hit% he allows is 29.2% while the MLB average is 39.5%. Varland has been everything the Blue Jays could have hoped for, especially when dealing away a couple of top end prospects for him at last years' trade deadline.

The con for keeping Varland as the closer is that the Blue Jays would be handcuffing themselves by keeping Varland in that box. The reason he has racked up so much bWAR already and why he's been so effective is because Schneider has had the flexibility to go to him when he feels like Varland is needed the most. Varland has in 20 situations that are classified as high leverage plate appearances and in those situations he's allowed three hits, while getting seven strikeouts. Tack on another 14 plate appearances that are considered medium leverage and that's another five k's and three hits in those outcomes as well.

Varland is almost too valuable to be saved for the very end of the game. It's a weird way to think about it since most of the time those last three outs are perceived to be the most important. But if you don't get to the ninth inning with the lead, you're giving yourself less of a chance to win the game.

The other names that pop up are perhaps Tyler Rogers and Braydon Fisher. Both guys have been almost as good as Varland, though neither guy has the same kind of stuff Varland can deploy, they have both been equally effective when called upon. Rogers, in 12.1 innings pitched only has five strikeouts, but he is a groundball generating machine. Opponents have 20% hard hit rate off him, while he's getting them to hit groundballs 68.3% of the time.

Fisher has thrown 12.2 innings this season and has racked up 12 strikeouts in those outings. He has limited walks at an elite rate of 4.7% (91st percentile) but he's also given up a lot of hard contact, but hasn't really paid for it. He doesn't have an elite fastball, but he's getting a 32% whiff rate on his slider that he uses 50% of the time, and that's allowed him to then use that four-seam fastball effectively, using it as his put away pitch 35.7% of the time.

Depending on the matchups, you can make an argument for using either guy in the closer's role. But similar to the counterpoint with Varland, you wouldn't want to save Rogers for the very end of the game if you're in a situation where you need to get some groundouts. For Fisher, he's in his second year at the MLB level, and that would be putting immense pressure on a guy who is already succeeding in the role he's been given - sometimes you don't want to mess with a good thing.

Outside of that, there aren't a ton of inspiring names. Mason Fluharty, Spencer Miles, Tommy Nance and Joe Mantiply are all perfectly suitable in their low-leverage, specialist roles when called upon. The makeup of this bullpen as currently constructed needs to rely more on Hoffman as it's closer right now. While that feels like a scary thought, the onus is on him to figure it out.

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