Jose Bautista

You know him a little bit from WBC stuff?

That's awesome.

Yeah, so that'll be cool.

Dome open would be cool, and we'll see.

Sandy Alcantara and Yuri Perez are pretty difficult matchups, but yeah, we'll see how this one goes.

I want to talk a little bit more bullpen with you.

So this was in my notes the last time you were on, which was two weeks ago now, because the change was a little more recent, and Jeff Hoffman was still figuring things out.

While Jeff Hoffman has...

you know, figured things out pretty well over the last little bit here.

Um, I obviously the, the home run issues from a little earlier in the season are still there, but he's striking out 16 per nine.

Um, the walks are, are pretty limited.

I know the era is still up at five Oh nine, but you look at some of the underlyings, it's like two and a half expected era, two and a half FIP.

When it comes to working on stuff and trying to figure that out, how much easier do you think it was for him to get right that he did come out of the closer role there and Louis Varlin was able to run with it and he got to work on some things in seventh inning and eighth inning appearances?

Yeah, there are some successful examples of Blue Jays teams in the 90s that had like dual closers or two options late in the game.

So the Louis Varland side of this is, you know, look, I think why you came into the season with Jeff Hoffman as the closer is because, I mean, you paid him and he was pretty good game seven aside.

But you also like Louis Varland in this kind of like fireman role of he can be an opener.

He can come in in the seventh with the bases loaded.

Yes, you can use him in leverage.

But at this point, he has a

0-6-5 ERA.