RA Whiffleball

He reminds me a little bit of Victoria, BC's Rich Harden, who had a decent career, mostly with the Athletics. He was a high strikeout guy with great stuff, but like Cease, would walk guys and get into a lot of deep counts, which meant most days, he would only go 5-6 innings. He also had injury issues.

Hands up if you were hiding behind the sofa after the first batter! Good to see Hoffman rebound - whether you like him or not, he is going to have to turn things around, or we are in deep doo-doo. The stars aligned nicely for JS to slot him in against the bottom of their order. I wonder if he would have thrown him in there if the top of their order was due up in the 9th. Cease is something else. If PW can work his magic and make him more efficient, we might have something really special here. Offensively, runs 3, 4, and 5 had Blue Jays 2025 written all over them. More of the same, please!

I`m more worried about HRs allowed by the BP. That was the difference in the WS. Everyone was saying their BP was their Achilles Heel, but ultimately it was our BP`s inability to prevent the HR that cost us the series. Their BP only allowed 1 HR in the entire WS, the Barger GS in a blowout game 1. In the critical games 3 and 7, their BP went 22 innings without allowing a HR. If their BP gives up even 1 HR in that span, in either game, the Jays win the series. Conversely, in the 20 innings our BP threw in those 2 games, we gave up 5 HR, 2 of which tied the game late, and 2 of which broke a tie late to win the game.

Dominguez out, Rogers in, He is not an add. Don't get me wrong, I like Rogers, but we need more 97-99 mph in our BP or this is going to be a long season. It seems every team we play rolls out these kind of arms in the late innings. We must be the only club that values 92-94 mph arms with lots of spin.

I was always worried about how Hoffman would recover mentally from Game 7. I look back at Mitch Williams, and he was never the same pitcher after 1993. The physical issues have been well documented by other posters, but every time he has a bad outing, the fanbase will go into meltdown, and John Schneider will face uncomfortable questions from the media. So far he has doubled down, like he always does, but this looks like another Brendan Little scenario. I was hoping the club would have brought in at least one elite late-inning reliever in free agency, especially since they weren't going to re-sign Dominguez and Bichette, and they lost out on Tucker. To me, we have too many relievers who don't throw hard, walk too many, and are vulnerable to the HR. Lack of HR prevention in our BP was the difference in the WS.