Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What were the highlights of the Blue Jays' win over the Angels?
Boy, well, Nick, if a game of razor-thin margins is what you want, then this game was for you. Tons of balls, finding gloves like magnets, whether it was Oswald Peraza catching a bunch of laser beams early on, Ernie Clement or Andres Jimenez with some highlight reel catches and double plays of their own. Ernie Clement with a ball placed inches inside them. the left field line.
He also factored heavily on the game winning double play in the ninth inning. Jeff Hoffman got the blood pumping just in case you weren't awake enough this late in the week. In the end though, a 4-2 Blue Jays win their 10th of the year and they finally snap that series losing streak. They win the series in Anaheim, just their second series win of the year.
Yesterday, we talked about that win being unlike much of the rest of the Blue Jays season where everything went to plan. The starter was great. All the high leverage guys were smooth. Everything was nice and simple for the Blue Jays in that game.
In this game, it felt a lot like a lot of the other games we've seen the Blue Jays play this season where they're really tight at the end of the game because the offense doesn't necessarily produce much, but they do get decent pitching. The difference this time is they were actually able to come up with a win at the end of the day.
It was very much in question there when Jeff Hoffman had a bit of a disastrous outing.
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Chapter 2: How did Jeff Hoffman's performance impact the game?
Louis Varlin put a quick end to the proceedings. It was not a game full of electric offense. It was not a game full of dazzling individual performances, but the Blue Jays will take a series win.
Lots of ground balls in this game. I know you had your running tally of ground balls.
Here's the counter. 20 ground ball outs, single ground ball outs, four ground into double plays, and five ground ball singles in a game where there were not a lot of hits overall. So that's a pretty high percent. Five out of 13 hits for ground ball singles. Devastating day for the worms there in the stadium. Really dangerous stuff with the ball all over the infield dirt there. Yeah.
That sounds about right. That's a, that's Nick Ashbourne show alley here with you as well. You're listening to Jay's talk.
Chapter 3: What role does Jeff Hoffman play in the Blue Jays' bullpen?
We're live on the sports net radio network. We're also streaming on sports net.ca and on the sports net app. You can give us a call 4 1 6 8 7 0 0 5 91 triple a triple 6 0 5 90 star 5 90 on your cell. You can text us as well. 5 95 90 name and location. The people's text line always open standard messaging and data rates may apply. And look,
I think without looking at the text line, I'm going to do it in two seconds here when you start talking, but I'm going to guess I know what the vast majority, it says we have, I can see like a number that says how many texts have come in. Even before I look at it, there's a lot that I have not read.
I'm going to guess most of them are Jeff Hoffman related based on how awake I feel and how awake I'm sure many of the listeners feel at this time of the night.
Yes, I believe there's going to be a lot of Jeff Hoffman related content in this show. And that is absolutely fair. Like this was an outing where he completely lost the handle. Now, was there a massive home run? Did they lose the game?
Chapter 4: How did Louis Varland secure his first major league save?
No. Ultimately, things turned out OK for the Blue Jays. I know on the show yesterday, like I have said before, I probably have more time for Jeff Hoffman than most people do. I said I believe that Jeff Hoffman will be a contributor to this team and he will be good at a certain point. The question is, when is he going to become effective again?
And will that be in the context of occupying the closer's role? And those are very much open questions at the moment because he has not been trustworthy or even close to it recently. Like hitting the batters in this game, To me, that shows something is just off on a different level than just being in a funk. In his career, Jeff Hoffman has hit 1.1% of hitters he's faced at the major league level.
So the statistical likelihood of him hitting two batters in a row based on his career average, about 1 in 10,000. So it doesn't feel like a coincidence anymore. You know what I mean? Things like this happening to him feels like he is in a very rough spot, whether you want to call that mentally, whether you want to call that mechanically.
It's hard to put exactly a pin in what is going on with him, but it's more than just a garden variety funk at this point, and the team is probably going to start acting accordingly to some degree.
Chapter 5: What can we expect from Patrick Corbin moving forward?
Yeah, we talked yesterday on Jay's talk about how Hoffman got... you know, the softest possible landing spot and how everything went according to plan for the Jays in the series opener against the angels in Anaheim. And yesterday he gave up a hit. So he essentially saw six, seven, eight, nine. And today it was effectively the opposite, right? He got to see the top of the order.
I mean, Tyler Rogers was so effective. I genuinely, and he had such so few pitches. I genuinely wondered if they'd, they'd think about running him back out there for the ninth inning only because, you know, and again, I, we'll see if, if Jose Soriano's hot start continues either tomorrow or for the rest of the season. And he has been easily one of the best pitchers in major league baseball.
So, but like knowing that I did wonder how much emptying the tank for your, your best circle of trust, top and high leverage relievers would factor into when making sure you needed to win this game tonight to win the series, considering that you would not want a series since the opening opening three games against the A's. And yeah, I mean today,
Top of the order for Hoffman comes out after they decide not to go to Rogers. So he does get the strikeout on Netto.
Chapter 6: What contributions did Eloy Jiménez and Lenyn Sosa make in the game?
But then to your point, Trout single hit by pitch on Adele. After getting ahead of Adele too, he gets ahead of Solaire, hits him as well. And then allows the hit to Yohan Moncada. I will say I'm not, I probably am more forgiving of mistakes than most people. I do think that John Schneider not getting Louis Varland up maybe right after Trout gets aboard.
It was a small blunder that did not burn them today because Louis Varland came out and got his first major league save on literally one pitch. I'm not saying John Schneider should wear all of it, but it was curious to me that it took a while for Varland to get active down there in that bullpen.
It seemed like he started to get active after Solaire got hit. And the Trout one, I'm okay with that. If you look at that pitch, it's on the inside corner. Mike Trout is a fantastic hitter. He's a Hall of Famer. He's one of the greatest baseball players of all time. I don't think it was a terrible pitch.
So all you'd seen from Hoffman at that point is he struck a guy out and a really good hitter just did his thing against him.
Chapter 7: How do injuries affect the Blue Jays' lineup and strategy?
So at that point, it's not too concerning. When he hits Joe Adele, Okay, now you've got the middle of the lineup coming up and you've got potentially the hitter who is the tying run at the plate. That's when you need to start thinking about Varland. I think he was one hit or two late. As you said, it didn't matter. At the end of the day, Varland was literally the best he possibly could have been.
He used one pitch. He got two outs. He got them out of the ballgame. It is going to be interesting to see what Schneider has to say about the situation at this point because... The double hit batters, that to me is a bit of a different thing than just having a couple bloop singles fall in or maybe just a hitter beating you and taking you over the wall.
There's a different feel to what went on in this game than other versions of Hoffman struggling.
Let's see, on the text line, Andrew from Kitchener, enough is enough. I would rather see Brendan Little close out games from now on.
Chapter 8: What are the implications of the Blue Jays' recent series win?
I don't know if that's true, Andrew. I feel like that's probably not true, but still, I understand your point. Forbes, how many more times are they going to run him out there to close a game? The last time... should have been the last time. This one is from Rachel in Brampton. Hoffman should not be in closer period. Louie to the rescue. Go Louie. Let's see Morgan in Antigonish in Nova Scotia.
Please let this put the closer discussion to rest. Varlin had earned the highest leverage spot. I'd rather find him in the closer spot over Hoffman. I Morgan also says, respectfully, I feel like that doesn't make it more more respectful than I say over often. But again, I get your point there.
Yeah. It's tough to frame that respectfully. Unfortunately, I get it. No, this is a very, very low hot moment for often. So it is easy to jump on and people are rarely as bad as they look at their worst moments. They're rarely as good as they work. look at their best moments. But at the same time, there's a moment to acknowledge when something is truly a problem.
And this feels like that moment, like him losing the handle on those pitches. Like I said before, that's just not a guy struggling or a guy experiencing bad luck. That's a guy kind of losing it out there. And that's what he did in this game.
And whether that means he's not going to get the next save, you know, John Schneider has always expressed a lot of faith in Jeff Hoffman, more than the general public.
I am very curious what he'll say tonight. Truthfully, I really am because you know what we said after the last time, no, wasn't you and I, maybe it was Caitlin and I, but, but either way, the last time there was a big blow up and we played the clips of, uh, John Schneider giving his faith publicly to Jeff Hoffman, you know, a lot of, I think a lot of what I landed on was.
Well, you know, we'll see, right? John Shiner can say that, and then, you know, if he doesn't follow up in truth to his words with his actions, then it doesn't really matter what he says, right? But he did. He did follow up.
Hoffman got a save opportunity yesterday in a soft landing spot, and then he got a save opportunity today that he kind of blew against the top of the Angels' order, and they're lucky that Varlin pulled their butts out of the fire because, I mean, as you can see, we're going to get to the calls in a sec here. It's a lot of criticism for Hoffman And I think rightly so. But yeah, it's I am.
I'm very curious what words John Schneider will use tonight because he's always been pretty frank, I would say.
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