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Although he walked in the tying run in the bottom of the eighth inning, Jeff Hoffman retained his manager's trust and came back to pitch the bottom of the ninth against the bottom of the Dodgers' order. That did not go to plan, as the closer who had a 5.8% walk rate before Sunday's game walked three out of the four batters he faced in the ninth.
In came Mason Fluharty, who before this game had a 5.23 ERA and a 4.20 FIP. The 23-year-old lefty rookie started off strongly for the Jays, but after a rough June, he was optioned back down to Triple-A Buffalo before just recently returning to the major league roster. Fluharty does have better peripherals than his results might suggest, with above-average strikeout and whiff rates, and he's been able to limit hard contact. He runs into issues here and there with his control, but his xERA is only 3.30 compared to his current ERA over 5.00.
However, Fluharty was mostly used in low-leverage spots before Sunday. This can be illustrated by a metric called Leverage Index (LI), which was created by statistician Tom Tango. According to MLB.com, LI measures "the importance of a particular event by quantifying the extent to which win probability could change on said event, with 1.0 representing a neutral situation."
Fluharty’s average Leverage Index prior to his save attempt against the Dodgers was 0.67. In contrast, when Fluharty came into the game after Hoffman loaded the bases, the LI was thirteen times higher, at a staggering 8.91. This was a do-or-die moment, the difference between the Dodgers sweeping the Jays and putting a sour note on the end of a road trip, or the Jays miraculously holding on in a nail-biter.
Pitch #1 - Fluharty faces Shohei Ohtani, the reigning NL MVP, and throws a sweeper on the outside corner for a called strike. 0-1.
Pitch #2 - Fluharty throws an 89.3-mph cutter up and in to Ohtani, who turns away from the pitch, swinging the bat in an effort to dodge the ball. Although it appeared that he swung, the third base umpire called it not a swing. Funnily enough, according to Tom Tango, if MLB implemented the 45-degree plane automated checked swing system they've been testing in the minors, this would in fact have been a checked swing. The count evens up at 1-1.
Pitch #3 - Fluharty throws a pitch at the bottom of the zone, and Ohtani is completely fooled, as the 82.6-mph sweeper dives off the plate with 45 inches of drop and 15 inches of sweep, getting him to chase. It’s 1-2 in Fluharty’s favour.
Pitch #4 - Fluharty tries another sweeper even further off the plate, but it goes in the dirt, and Ohtani easily takes it and evens the count up at 2-2.
Pitch #5 - Fluharty goes back inside to Ohtani after two straight breaking balls, and Ohtani is forced to foul it off, as the pitch was about to clip the inside corner. The count remains 2-2.
Pitch #6 - Fluharty then tries to elevate the cutter slightly higher, trying to get him to chase up in the zone, but Ohtani takes that pitch as well. The Jays' dugout is not happy that it wasn’t called a strike, despite being out of the zone. The count is now full.
Pitch #7 - The next pitch is another sweeper reminiscent of pitch number two, but this time it’s in the zone. Ohtani is able to get to it and foul it off, and Fluharty has to go again.
Pitch #8 - Fluharty then tries to throw the sweeper on the inside part of the plate, but it backs up a bit on him, and Ohtani takes a big hack that sends the pitch foul. The count remains 3-2.
Pitch #9 - With the game on the line, Fluharty once again throws a sweeper, this time below the zone, and Ohtani chases. After throwing two straight sweepers in the zone that resulted in foul-offs, the rookie challenged the MVP on a pitch that could have tied the game up for the Dodgers. Instead, he recorded one of the biggest outs of the season for the Jays.
Mookie Betts then comes up to the dish, and although the 2018 AL MVP has been struggling at the plate relative to his norm, the righty still is an above-average hitter against lefty pitching, and Fluharty has struggled more against right-handed hitters so far this season.
Pitch #10 - Fluharty goes to the cutter, as sweepers typically have wide platoon splits, but he throws it way out of the zone for ball one.
Pitch #11 - He then throws another cutter, but this time paints it on the outside corner to even the count up.
Pitch #12 - This time, it’s a cutter on the inside corner, and Betts swings at it, resulting in a soft grounder to Addison Barger. The third baseman forces out Alex Call at second to win the game and finish off Mason Fluharty's very first MLB save.
The last pitcher to retire two former MVPs back-to-back with the bases loaded en route to a save was Hall of Famer Trevor Hoffman in 2002 (OptaStats). This just goes to show the depth of this Jays team, as a relatively unknown rookie reliever could come up and perform in a big moment when key members of the bullpen were hurt or under-performing. From top to bottom, the majority of the Jays' 40-man roster has stepped up in a major way in 2025.
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- Spanky__99 and Mike LeSage
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