max silver

Yeah I thought we were well past this point by now. This was a team loss in every possible way. The entire bullpen was largely crap as I believe only Varland pitched a clean inning with everyone else allowing a run to score in their innings of work, just the same as Hoffman. As you mentioned the team had several chances to pad their lead early and didn't, and then a glorious opportunity to win in the 9th inning. Varsho failed to get the ball to the outfield to score the runner from third easily, but then the coaching staff had IKF take a minimal lead and he took no secondary lead and then compounded matters further by sliding into home plate vs running at top speed. Then the team had another great chance to tie the game in extra innings and Kirk hit into a season ending double play. But of course Hoffman still get assigned 100% of the blame when the team wasted innumerable opportunities to score more runs so that his single run wouldn't have mattered.

Ah it seems as though I missed the context of the original discussion.

This isn't game 1 for Yimi. It's his 4th appearance in the last 10 days or so but the first in AAA. His velocity and spin were much better in his Dunedin outings but this recent appearance is definitely cause for concern for a player who has suffered so many setbacks on the way back from elbow surgery.

That's an awful look considering how he essentially held the organization hostage with his ridiculous contract demands.

Yeah the Statcast box score is the stuff of nightmares. Yimi's velocity was down 2-3 MPH on most of his offerings with a corresponding decrease of approximately 300 RPM. Maybe he'll be able to return as more of a middle relief option but it appears as though the premium fireman version of Garcia is a thing of the past.

I don't think lack of aggression is the issue. The team is 2nd worst in chasing pitches out of the strike zone this season so I think the issue is far too much aggressiveness.

Maybe but I do think Miles was showing signs of slowing down with the string of extended outings and his stuff was starting to drop off.

It's been a little boring without him around but at the same time there's been a lot less drama as well.

Even if Hoffman's xFIP isn't a true indication of his actual talent level this season the 3.19 xERA, 2.86 FIP and 2.04 SIERA all point to a reliever that should be enjoying more success than he has so far. Ultimately I believe Hoffman is a reliever that needs a little more downtime compared to rubber arm guys like Rogers and Varland who can pitch 2 out of every 3 days. I think with Hoffman the disaster outings/weeks tend to arrive when he's throwing 3 out of 4 or even 4 out of 5 days. Fingers crossed we get something close to a fully loaded version of Yimi back as that would add another high quality leverage arm and allow the club to pull back a little on the entire leverage group to avoiding burning them out.

Hoffman had an excellent xBA last season and suppressed line drive contact with a 16.5% line drive rate so the BABIP wasn't necessarily completely underserved. His primary issues were regarding the home run ball and that's not captured by BABIP anyway. I think your counterpoint is a bit of a false equivalency anyway as potentially being 50 points on the lucky side of BABIP isn't really a direct counterpoint to being punished 200 points on the bad fortune side this season.

Last night was yet another instance of Hoffman being comically unlucky on the results of batted balls in play as he gave up a single which shouldn't have occurred with proper fielding. Hoffman is only allowing a 27% fly ball rate this season so the HR/FB ratio isn't hurting him to any great degree. I fully believe the historically unlucky BABIP is going to eventually normalize we'll eventually get a better read on what Hoffman actually is this season. The underlying numbers are elite and there's no conceivable way he's going to be subjected to a .500 BABIP over a full season of play. He very well may be an elite reliever this season once his luck normalizes albeit one still prone to the occasional meltdown.

I'm hoping the stuff has returned to what he featured in his first start of the season. His stuff metrics dropped precipitously right as the forearm issue was announced .

Sanchez has handily outperformed Kyle Tucker with the bat so far this season. He's an outright disaster in the field but he's delivered a solid 135 wRC+ against right handed pitching.

I can agree that SWR needs to sufficiently command the baseball to maximize his chances of success. Having said that the worse the stuff is the more likely it becomes that even well located pitches lead to solid contact against him. I recall seeing somewhere that his arm angle had changed this season and wonder if this is something the Blue Jays are working towards addressing. I believe a key factor in whether he can turn his season around will be commanding the splitter more effectively. I believe that can potentially be an out pitch for him if he can avoid the number of apparent mistakes shown in the heat maps.

It's a little early to make any declarations about SWR. He had something like a 10+ day break in between outings and he'll need to prove that he can continue to show improved stuff with more frequent usage.