The Toronto Blue Jays, by all accounts, have been one of the best teams in baseball this season.<\/p>\n
Though not necessarily predicted by many to be a serious playoff threat in 2025, they\u2019re now in the final month of the season with a 2.5-game lead on the American League East.<\/p>\n
But Toronto\u2019s up-and-down bullpen has led many to be skeptical about their playoff hopes, particularly if they\u2019ll be relying on closer\u00a0Jeff Hoffman<\/a>.<\/p>\n Monday\u2019s loss was<\/a> particularly tough to take: Chris Bassitt pitched six innings while giving up just two runs, before Toronto saw a 4-2 lead in the ninth inning evaporate at the hands of Tommy Nance and Brendon Little, as they fell 5-4 to the Cincinnati Reds.<\/p>\n As for Bassitt himself, he didn\u2019t appear willing to throw his teammates under the bus, suggesting that the starters need to last longer into games.<\/p>\n \u201cI know there\u2019s probably a lot of hatred, so to speak, on the bullpen, but I mean those guys are tired,\u201d he said after the game, per Sportsnet\u2019s Ben Nicholson-Smith<\/a>.<\/p>\n How tired has the Blue Jays\u2019 pitching been this season?<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth digging into Bassitt\u2019s claims about how overworked the bullpen might be, and whether the starters should be going deeper into games.<\/p>\n Based on personnel, starting pitching should be an absolute strength for the Blue Jays. Along with Bassitt, a rotation of Max Scherzer, Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios, and the newly-acquired Shane Bieber is highlighted by some of the biggest names in the sport. But in actuality, Blue Jays starters have a 4.35 ERA, which is 20th in the MLB. They\u2019ve pitched 722.2 innings, which is 15th in the MLB, or exactly bang average.<\/p>\n The bullpen, on the other hand, has an ERA of 4.12, 17th in MLB. It\u2019s slightly better than the starters\u2019 ERA, but far from a strength. On the innings front, they\u2019ve pitched 502.1 innings, 13th most in the MLB: 64 innings more than the least-used bullpen in Tampa Bay, and 62 fewer than the most-used bullpen in the Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n In any case, Bassitt seemed to be trying to shield his teammates from a bit of the social media wrath, but the claims of the bullpen being overworked compared to the rest of the MLB don\u2019t quite hold up.<\/p>\n You might also like:Toronto Blue Jays fans sound off after another brutal blown save<\/a>
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