{"id":693526,"date":"2026-05-08T12:30:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T12:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/693526\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T12:30:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T12:30:19","slug":"role-change-has-made-this-blue-jays-reliever-a-surprising-trade-deadline-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/693526\/","title":{"rendered":"Role change has made this Blue Jays reliever a surprising trade deadline target"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2026 season has been off to a shaky start for the Toronto Blue Jays. Significant injury trouble has impacted the Blue Jays, as they have a 16-21 record and are fourth in the American League East standings. They also have lost each of their last four games. <\/p>\n

However, while the injury bug is a big reason for the Blue Jays’ lack of success, some of their healthy players have also struggled this season. Among them is relief pitcher Jeff Hoffman, as the 6-foot-5 righty recently lost the Blue Jays’ closer role<\/a> due to his early-season struggles. <\/p>\n

In 17 appearances this season with the Blue Jays, Hoffman has a 1-2 record, a 5.74 ERA, and three saves. Overall, the 11-year veteran had a tough start to the campaign, and now there are questions about his future in Toronto coming up in the rumor mill. <\/p>\n

In a recent article for Bleacher Report<\/a>, Kerry Miller named Hoffman as the Blue Jays player most likely to be moved by the 2026 MLB Trade Deadline.<\/p>\n

“Triple-A pitching prospects Adam Macko and Jake Bloss are probably more likely to get moved, but could the Blue Jays unload Hoffman now that Louis Varland has shown himself capable as the closer?” Miller wrote. “He has just been dreadfully unlucky in the early going, and teams might want to buy low on the 2024 All-Star.”<\/p>\n

Blue Jays would be wise to practice patience with Hoffman before potential trade<\/p>\n

Seeing Hoffman named as a trade candidate to watch<\/a> is not necessarily surprising. It is significant that he lost the Blue Jays’ closer role, and it is fair to wonder if Toronto could listen to trade offers for him because of it. <\/p>\n

Despite his slow start to the season, Hoffman’s strong resume could very well lead to him generating interest. This is especially so when noting that playoff teams are always on the hunt for bullpen help. Therefore, it would make sense if he had suitors leading up to the deadline. <\/p>\n

Although Hoffman lost Toronto’s closer role this season, they should be patient before potentially dealing him. His past success screams that he has the potential to bounce back and regain his former All-Star form.<\/p>\n

In fact, Hoffman has been slowly starting to improve as the season rolls on. He has allowed just one earned run over his last five appearances. If he keeps this kind of pitching up, the Blue Jays very well could elect to keep him around in that set up role, bridging the gap to Varland. Hoffman’s best results in his MLB career have come as the set up guy. <\/p>\n

While he was in that role between 2022-2024 with Cincinnati and Philadelphia, he was worth 4.7 bWAR over 157 games. He pitched to a 2.70 ERA with 203 strikeouts in 163.1 innings pitched and an anemic 0.8 HR\/9 rate. The Blue Jays would love to see him return to that kind of production no matter where he’s pitching out of the Blue Jays bullpen. <\/p>\n

\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 season has been off to a shaky start for the Toronto Blue Jays. Significant injury trouble…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2378],"tags":[5,377,2554,4,282,70,2553],"class_list":{"0":"post-693526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blue-jays","10":"tag-bluejays","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-toronto","13":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","14":"tag-torontobluejays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116538968483893551","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}