This Blue Jays reliever has quietly become one of the best arms in baseball

The Toronto Blue Jays' walk-off win over the Padres on Thursday was a great sign for the Blue Jays in a plethora of ways.

Not only did it put them one game above .500 for the first time since April, but it also showed the amount of fight the Blue Jays have. They took a lead early, surrendeed it late and went back and forth with the Padres before Nathan Lukes hit a walk-off single.

It also showed off how valuable Brendon Little can be.

While Little allowed the two "ghost runners" to score in each of the innings he worked (which are unearned runs), he was able to limit the damage, which is crucial.

With the strong outing, Little's now gone nearly a month without allowing an earned run, which is a huge help to a Toronto bullpen that's been a strength so far this year.

Brendon Little has quietly become one of the best arms in baseball

A year after having the worst bullpen ERA in the American League (4.83), Toronto's relief unit currently has a much more respectable 3.71 ERA.

A big reason for that shift is due to emergence of Little, who enters Friday with a 1.50 ERA in 24 innings and has quickly become one of the team's high-leverage arms.

Little's only allowed multiple earned runs in one inning once (in a loss to the Mets on April 5th), and hasn't allowed an earned run since his outing against the Yankees on April 25.

Little's been worth 0.7 fWAR this season (which is tied for the seventh-best mark among relievers), and his 35.4% strikeout rate is tied for 11th among all relievers.

His dominance gets even more pronounced when you take a look at his advanced statistics, as he's in the 100th percentile in whiff rate, the 96th percentile in strikeout rate and the 94th percentile in ground-ball rate.

While Little entered the year as a left-handed specialist, he's actually been at his best against right-handed batters this year. Right-handed are only hitting .109 against him this year (52 at-bats), while left-handed hitters are hitting .262.

He held lefties to a .202 batting average last year.

While Little performing much better than he did last year, his 2024 season still gave us some signs that a breakout was on the way.

HIs ground-ball rate of 71.3% led all relievers who had thrown at least 40 innings, and he had a 3.05 ERA across the last two months of the season.

Now he's helping lead a bullpen resurgence that's starting in the middle innings. Yariel Rodríguez has a 3.20 ERA in 25 1/3 innings and is beginning to look like a bullpen weapon. Mason Fluharty has been lights out in his rookie year (2.25 ERA). Yimi García has been great outside of one disastrous outing.

Jeff Hoffman's rocky month of May (16.71 ERA) continued on Thursday when he surrendered a game-tying two-run home run in the ninth inning, which makes it even more clear that the Jays need all the help they can in their 'pen.

While it's likely too early to pull the plug on Hoffman has the team's closer, Little has worked his way into that conversation if it ever arrives.