What can the Blue Jays do with reliever Brendon Little?

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Whether it’s the 60 feet, six inches from the mound to the plate or the six inches between his ears, Little’s command remains elusive.

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Published Mar 31, 2026 • 4 minute read

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Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Brendon Little reacts after giving up a grand slam against the Athletics. The Canadian PressArticle content

Head down, shoulders slumped Blue Jays relief pitcher Brendon Little slowly walked off the Rogers Centre field on Monday night, the boos raining down, loud and with disgust.

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Unfortunately for the struggling left hander, it has become the soundtrack of his recent time with the Jays.

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And now the team must figure out what to do with him.

“You feel for him,” manager John Schneider said following Monday’s latest struggles for the Jays reliever, who helped send a close game to blowout territory in a 14-5 loss to the lowly Colorado Rockies. “He hears the crowd and we hear the crowd.

“He’s been so good for us and he has amazing stuff. He just has to figure out a way to harness it and get outs.”

Far easier said than done for Little, who had become such a whipping boy for spectacular flameouts during last year’s post-season that you had to wonder if he’d ever recover.

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The line from Little’s latest was gruesome as he allowed four runs on four hits with a walk to see his limited-sample-size ERA bloom to a laughable 47.25. After striking out the first batter he faced, the next Rockies batsmen went single, walk (on four pitches), double, double, ground out.

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When the inning was done, the Rockies had put up seven runs and led 9-1.

In his first outing of the season, Little was rocked even harder, giving up a grand slam in the seventh inning of Saturday’s game against the Athletics that blew the Jays lead. The team eventually came back to win, but the same old concerns.

“It’s been two outings so far this season and they haven’t gone great,” Schneider said, which just four games in may go down as his understatement of the season. “We want do everything we can to help him. I don’t want to put too much weight into two outings.

“It’s an easy narrative to write about, but Brendon Little has electric stuff and we’ve got to figure out a way to help him.”

Why are Little’s struggles so puzzling?

Here’s where it becomes profoundly baffling for the braintrust of Schneider and pitching coach Pete Walker.

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The personable Little took improvement seriously in the off-season, adding strength to his upper body, particularly his left shoulder, changes that seemed to take in spring training when the addition of a four-seam fastball that could reach 98 mph was playing well.

The blueprint tied to that regiment was to be able to fire that pitch to the top of the zone, further flummoxing hitters with his nasty breaking ball.

In theory, it made a ton sense. In practice, he still isn’t throwing enough strikes, as we’ve seen in the two rough outings so far.

“He took some heat at the end of last year, but we used him a lot,” Walker told us in spring training. “He had some months that were nasty. Unhittable. His goal is to get a hitter in swing mode.

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“If he’s throwing strikes, he’s one of the best lefties in the game.”

If only it were that simple and yes, therein lies the problem. Whether it’s the 60 feet, six inches from pitcher’s mound to home plate or the six inches between his ears, the command of the strike zone remains elusive.

How much longer will team stick with Little?

Little’s struggles to throw strikes is still very much in effect and one has to wonder how much longer he can take the heat. Or more pressing: Whether Blue Jays management believes they can afford to keep him on the roster to work things out.

Little still has options and could be sent down to triple A Buffalo to sort things out and refine some of the good work he had shown in Grapefruit League play.

“Obviously this game’s tough and the better your team is, the bigger the stage, so when you do have a tough outing, it’s magnified,” Walker said in Dunedin when asked how Little handled the negativity last fall. “But he never went into a shell. He always wanted the ball and we wanted to get him back out there.

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“He takes a lot of pride in being there for his teammates and worked hard this off-season.”

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In a conversation I had with Little during spring training, he was genuinely enthused about some of those changes, in particular how the fastball would play for him. He worked hard in the offseason to be physically stronger in hopes of avoiding that fatigue that was a factor late in 2025 and couldn’t wait to return to a leverage spot in the Jays bullpen.

“He’s been really, really good for us,” Schneider said on Monday. “We really liked what we saw in spring training in terms of adjustments he made and he can be a big part of our bullpen.”

How they get him back to the lethal Little form during the hear of last season is the question.

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What can the Blue Jays do with reliever Brendon Little?

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