After finishing with the second-worst bullpen ERA in baseball last season to the Colorado Rockies, the Toronto Blue Jays are heading down the stretch of 2025 with the second-worst bullpen ERA since the All-Star Break, next to… the Colorado Rockies.

Sound familiar?

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Did the Blue Jays flub the trade deadline by not acquiring elite bullpen help?

Yes, the names are new this season, but the results, at least of late, have been the same. The bullpen is clearly the Achilles heel of this team, and if there’s anything that might hold them back in the postseason, that is it.

Closer Jeff Hoffman has 28 saves, tied for 5th in the majors, but he’s also blown seven. He has a 4.77 ERA, for an ERA+ of just 90 (10% below league average), and in August, he’s blown half of his save opportunities (three of six).

Over the past decade, specifically since the 2015 Kansas City Royals‘ 7th-8th-and-9th-inninged their way to a World Series title, teams around baseball have focused on loading up their bullpens as much as possible heading into the playoffs, and this year’s Blue Jays should have been no different. But they were.

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Failure to Add Elite Bullpen Arms at Deadline

It’s not like GM Ross Atkins ignored the relief core at the trade deadline. He did go out and acquire Seranthony Dominguez, a hard-thrower with plenty of back-end-of-the-bullpen experience. But elite? No one has ever confused Dominguez with that superlative. And thus far with Toronto, he’s been giving the Jays the full Seranthony Dominguez Experience: plenty of high-octane gas and strikeouts (11.7 K/9), but also a high-wire act that includes his standard wildness (6.3 BB/9), and an unimpressive 4.50 ERA in 10 innings.

Louie Varland? Sure, he’d put up some awesome numbers for the lowly Minnesota Twins this season (a 2.02 ERA in 49 innings, a 1.10 WHIP, with a 47:13 strikeouts-to-walks ratio). But as a high-leverage reliever? Not a ton of experience on that front. And since he’s come north of the border into the pressure-packed innings of a pennant race? 6.30 ERA with a 1.70 WHIP in 10 innings.

Did the Blue Jays make a mistake not adding some more ‘sure things’ to the back of their bullpen? MLB Insider Jeff Passan wondered if that “is gonna be the thing that takes this magical season and turns it on its head.”

“If there was criticism about the Jays’ deadline, it’s that they didn’t get the elite reliever they needed… Jeff Hoffman is just not working,” offered Passan.

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Blue Jays Bullpen Dreadful Since All-Star Break

Since the All-Star Break, the Toronto bullpen has a 5.74 ERA and in 75.2 August innings, has surrendered an atrocious 51 walks. “That’s not a team that goes to the World Series,” said Passan, bluntly.

The only saving grace right now for this relief corps’ very bad look is that some of the biggest names that were available at the deadline, like Ryan Helsley and Jhoan Duran, have also not exactly been tearing it up of late.

Helsley, in fact, has a 10.38 ERA in 8.2 innings with the New York Mets in a set-up role, and while Duran has fared far better with the Philadelphia Phillies, he has a loss and a blown save in two of his last three outings.

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All this to say, we know that relief arms are a fickle thing in baseball. Success comes and it goes. Sometimes from season to season, sometimes from game to game. But that’s even more of a reason to load up as much as possible… The more options you have complete confidence in, the better.

At this point, if the Blue Jays continue to be wallowing around with the Colorado Rockies of the world in bullpen performance, it doesn’t bode well for the postseason.

It seems like an opportunity lost at the trade deadline.

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