From Frustration to Expectation: Why History Points to a Strong Blue Jays Bullpen in 2025

Baseball is full of unpredictable occurrences. Unlikely heroes can emerge at any point, unbreakable records can be shattered, and even Alejandro Kirk can make the impossible happen and hit a triple. It's part of the game's charm. The unpredictability makes the game unique and occasionally makes you frustrated enough to want to bang your head against the wall.

Few things are more unpredictable or more frustrating than volatile relief arms, and the Bue Jays bullpen was a frequent source of frustration in 2025. It was supposed to be a strength for the team; in 2023, Jordan Romano was an All-Star and his 36 saves were second in the AL. Erik Swanson, Jordan Hicks, Jay Jackson, Bowden Francis, and Genesis Cabrera all had sub-3.00 ERA’s. And let's not forget Tim Mayza, whose 1.52 ERA was the sixth-lowest among all pitchers with at least 50 innings pitches. In fact, the pen as a whole was pretty good. Its 3.68 ERA ranked eighth, its 3.91 FIP ranked sixth, and its 3.11 strikeout-to-walk ratio was the absolute best. The Blue Jays definitely benefitted from having to throw fewer relief innings than most teams, which meant depending less on the back-end of the bullpen, but even so, Fangraphs projections had them as the tenth-ranked relief corps in baseball going into the 2024 season.

That's not how the season played out. Romano was ineffective and only threw 13 2/3 innings before getting hurt. Swanson ran an ERA over 5.00 and earned a midseason demotion. Mayza, who had been so dominant the year prior, pitched to an 8.03 ERA before being designated for assignment at the end of June. Only Yimi García, Chad Green, and deadline acquisition Ryan Yarborough had a positive bWAR pitching predominantly out of the pen for the Blue Jays. That ultimately led to a negative WAR overall by the pen, dead last in all of baseball. Talk about frustrating.

We’ve already seen the Blue Jays make some changes to help improve the bullpen, Romano was non-tendered, and Cabrera, Luis Frias, and Dillon Tate all elected free agency. They’ve also made some additions, Jeff Hoffman has been one of the best relievers in baseball over the past two seasons, and he will certainly help. So should the re-signing of García and the addition of Nick Sandlin in a trade with the Guardians earlier this off-season. But as things currently stand, Swanson, Green, Zach Pop, Brendon Little, and Tommy Nance are all currently projected to be in the 'pen and several others will make an appearance throughout the long season. ZiPS projections just ran over at FanGraphs, and they have the bullpen projected for 3.2 WAR (before the addition of Jeff Hoffman). If the Jays can get anywhere close to this number it will go a long way to improving on 2024's 74-win total. But just how much can we expect the Blue Jays bullpen to improve in 2024? Let's start by taking a look at how the Blue Jays bullpen has shaken up over its history.


 

No matter how you look at it, 2024 was an outlier in every sense of the word. Not only was it the worst in baseball; it was also the worst in franchise history. Odds are, no matter what happens this year, the Blue Jays aren't going to repeat that. Throughout franchise history, they have averaged 2.67 RP WAR per season, that number should be a good goal to shoot for in 2025.

The Blue Jays had a 6.1-win Drop from 2023 to 2024 and that simply just doesn't happen often in baseball. Since 2000 it has only happened eight times (and that number falls to six if you throw out the short 2020 season.

Take a look at year three. After their disastrous drop-off, these six teams improved their WAR by an average of 3.0 wins the next season (and that number becomes 4.0 if you include the 2021 Red Sox and Yankees). Some of this is simple regression; in order to have a big enough drop to appear on this table, you need to start out great in year one, then fall off terribly in year two, so your true talent level is probably somewhere in the middle anyway. And teams with such bad bullpens don't just run back the same terrible squad the next season; as the Blue Jays have, they get rid of the worst performers and bring in reinforcements.

Now, while this should be reassuring, it doesn't guarantee anything. The Blue Jays will still need their relievers to stay healthy pitch well, and they will likely need a one or two of them to step up with surprise performance. But even if they don't reach their franchise average of  2.67 RP WAR or the 3.2 WAR that ZiPS projects, history says that no matter what happens, the Jays are unlikely going to end up with a minus sign in front of their WAR again. That should make for a lot less frustration coming out of the bullpen in 2025.