Arden Zwelling

And yeah,

But we still believe in Jeff and we think that he's going to be really good and he's striking everybody out and his stuff's as good as we've seen it and he's healthy and great.

But we're going to use some different options in the ninth and it might not always be Hoffman.

But also, Jeff, be ready to pitch the ninth sometimes because there will be nights when Louis Varlin pitched back to back and isn't available or when Varlin's most valuable facing the heart of the order in the eighth.

And then we're going to use Hoffman against like 7, 8, 9 in the ninth.

So everybody just be ready to pitch.

That's how I would message it.

think it also removes like this daily dalliance that we do with schneids where we um kind of like flirt around the question of is jeff hoffman still your closer right where we ask well have you considered doing things differently or how do you feel about jeff or like what like he can just have that conversation on friday afternoon however he wants to have it whatever number of conversations it is and however he wants to message it and then when he meets with us later on

And inevitably, one of us is going to ask him about the Hoffman situation.

He could just say, yep, we're going to be more flexible with late game leverage.

And you could see any of the above in the ninth.

And then you just read out like your entire bullpen.

And then that just removes the question and that removes the uncertainty.

And that sort of just removes the conflict from the air.

And people are happy that they've heard what they want to hear.

And then you can just kind of move on.

You know, at AAA, there is a reliever who over his last seven appearances has allowed four hits, four walks, only one run.

It was unearned and is running a 46% strikeout rate.

Sounds pretty good.

He has really, really good stuff.