Dan Shulman

and I understand their rationale there, I still was surprised they did it the way they did it.

I thought they were going to flip it.

I thought Varlin would come in to try to keep it tied, and then Hoffman comes in at the bottom of the ninth no matter what.

I look at it a little bit differently, I think, than some people.

I think eighth versus ninth, tied versus one-run lead, I think it's all kind of the same leverage.

It's huge.

It's big-time leverage late in the game.

So if there's a save situation tonight, and I'm just guessing,

I think Jeff Hoffman is getting it.

But based on what John Schneider said after the game a couple of days ago, although it wasn't ironclad, I still think that Jeff Hoffman is the closer.

Yeah, and I hope that he's back soon, and I hope that he's healthy.

Like, we all know when Jimmy Garcia's healthy, he can be a ninth-inning guy, but he can also be a Louis Varland, right?

He can also be a put out the fire guy.

Jimmy at his best with the Blue Jays was fantastic.

But, you know, he's had some peaks and valleys and some of them were because of health as well.

But whether he's seventh or eighth or ninth or clean up a mess or start an inning doesn't matter to me.

It's just another power late arm, big boy, not afraid of the moment arm that you can put down there anywhere in the late innings.

we'll see how it goes um i mean if hoffman comes out and has a great one then i think you're kind of back to square one if hoffman comes out in his next time and struggles again then i think the conversations only get bigger and more meaningful obviously but i wouldn't be surprised if there are certain times where it's flipped without anybody saying there's been a change in the closer situation right now it could be a top and bottom thing it could be a rest and rust thing like

You know how it is like they can say we did this because of X or Y or Z. Like you can you can kind of frame it any which way you want to.

But ultimately, whatever they're doing, they've got to they've got to win as many games as they can starting immediately.