The Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners just completed a classic ALCS that was exactly what you want playoff baseball to be. The stars were stars. Unsung heroes emerged. There was some fabulous pitching mixed in around outbursts of offense, whether that was Bryce Miller rising to the occasion on short rest in Game 1 or Max Scherzer turning back the clock in Game 4. It was a series of wild emotional swings in each direction.
The two biggest swings were the result of bullpen deployment decisions. One will haunt Seattle forever and the other will go down as a footnote in Blue Jays lore.
In the big picture, both managers followed the same line of thinking. Both were presented with high-leverage opportunities and decided to leave their top bullpen arms waiting for later innings. Both were burned for their choices as inferior relievers gave up leads for good.
But the “why” matters here.
The Plan
For Dan Wilson, it was trusting Eduard Bazardo in Game 7, who had been excellent throughout the season even if he wasn’t Seattle’s top arm, to set up a six-out save for the lights-out Andrés Muñoz.
For John Schneider, it was bypassing Jeff Hoffman to bring in Brendon Little with a one-run lead in Game 5 for the sake of making the Mariners’ top hitters “see different guys” over the course of the series.
Asked John Schneider why he turned to Little in the 8th, not Hoffman or Domínguez.
Schneider’s says he wanted to make that part of the lineup “see different guys”
He reiterated that Little has been one of their best pitchers and that he’ll continue to trust his guys. #BlueJays
— Keegan Matheson (@KeeganMatheson) October 18, 2025
The Mariners wanted to save Muñoz for, well, a save. The Jays wanted to save Hoffman from overexposure. They’ve been trying to do that with everyone except for rubber-armed Louis Varland, who has appeared in 10 of Toronto’s 11 postseason games so far.
Schneider has been keeping his top relievers from seeing individual hitters too many times, particularly the meat of the lineup. The wake of Game 5 was the first time it garnered major attention, but it’s something the Jays have been mindful of, and for good reason:
Hitters vs RP overall, 2025 postseason:
.233/.319/.389
Hitters vs RP for 3rd time in a series, ’25 postseason:
.276/.360/.500
That’s +.152 of OPS (.708 ➡️ .860)
— Arden Zwelling (@ArdenZwelling) October 21, 2025
After all, George Springer’s series-flipping blast came in his third at-bat against Bazardo. Below are all the pitches from that battle over the course of the ALCS. Eventually, a good hitter will be able to figure out the plan of attack and adjust. After two unsuccessful at-bats, Springer was waiting for a sinker on the inner half of the plate — why wouldn’t he, given that half of the pitches he had already seen from Bazardo were sinkers on the inner half? The first pitch he saw in Game 7 was a sinker way inside. The second was a strike, just a little lower than those from Games 2 and 6, and Springer was locked in. The rest is history.
Schneider was shredded for Game 5 – rightly so – but was committed to a series-long plan to limit the exposure of his bullpen arms. He picked the wrong guy at a very bad time, but had a few things to sway him.
Little had surrendered just two home runs in 68.1 innings in the regular season; Hoffman was the most homer-prone pitcher in the AL with Cal Raleigh waiting at the dish. Little’s poor command and waning effectiveness as the season wore on meant it was a bad decision either way, but it wasn’t necessarily made because Hoffman had to get the ninth. Shoot, Hoffman got the eighth in Game 4.
Why you would use your theoretical best reliever in that spot but not this one bears asking, but what’s done is done. All evidence points to Schneider sticking to a guiding principle of varying the looks opponents get at the plate.
Note that only winning teams get the luxury of diving into the “why” for moves like this. We’re one swing from asking why Hoffman wasn’t used for Raleigh, Jorge Polanco, and Josh Naylor (or Randy Arozarena and Eugenio Suárez thereafter) in that eighth inning. Wilson would love to have us talking in retrospect about a big bullet dodged, but alas. The Jays are here, and the Mariners are home.
Toronto stuck to their process and will keep on ducking and weaving their way through the mighty Dodgers in the World Series, preventing any one pitcher from too much action against the same guys…
… except for Varland, who is apart from the pack in this grand bullpen plan.
The Outlier
Even in the ALDS, the Blue Jays were diligent about keeping their relievers away from too many battles with the same batter. A four-game series featuring a bullpen game and a Game 2 that was mostly mop-up duty will skew the numbers to a certain extent, but the Jays executed their plan. Hoffman never faced the same batter more than once. The only two relievers to see a Yankee three times were Little, against Trent Grisham, and Varland, against Giancarlo Stanton and Jazz Chisholm Jr., though the third at-bat for each came in the second inning because Varland opened Game 4.
A seven-game ALCS left nowhere to hide. Schneider tried his best, and the end result was only four relievers seeing the same batter three or more times. Mason Fluharty and Seranthony Domínguez each did it once. Hoffman did it twice, though Dominic Canzone only made it as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning of Game 7.
And then there’s Varland.
Blue Jays Bullpen vs. Mariners Hitters
So what is it about Varland that has Schneider willing to push the envelope?
It looks like one pitch. Which pitch? It might not matter.
Varland has five pitches in his arsenal, and while it’s the electric fastball and sharp knuckle curve that he leans on most, he has enough options to show up as a different guy on any given day. Varland’s work in the ALCS is displayed below, with his most-used pitch highlighted green and his second-most-used pitch in yellow. Aside from Games 1 and 6, Varland didn’t follow much of a pattern.
Varland’s arsenal means he has a safety net if one of his two primary pitches isn’t working, and he can attack hitters in entirely different fashion from one day to the next. He has drastically ramped up the use of his changeup in the playoffs, throwing it 19.9% of the time through two rounds after only throwing changeups 4.7% of the time in the regular season. It’s also helpful if your changeup sits 92-95.
Varland was also able to pivot, particularly late in the series when it looked like he was running out of gas. In Game 7, Varland’s fastball sat just under 98 mph; in each of his first five appearances against Seattle, he was brushing 99. Even 99 is a big difference from the guy we saw in Game 1 of the ALDS, who dispatched Giancarlo Stanton with 101 up the gut. Varland was able to work out of trouble by throwing more curves and changes rather than leaning entirely on his fastball. Losing any velocity against a team with Seattle’s power is playing with fire, but Varland had enough in his bag to stay effective. It wasn’t perfect, as Varland gave up a solo homer to Raleigh in Game 7, but he was able to get through Rodriguez, Naylor, Polanco, and Arozarena without any further damage.
A pitcher with Varland’s stuff and variety is hard to plan for since he can mix in a third or fourth pitch frequently enough to command respect from hitters. A blow-away fastball is Varland’s foundational pitch, but if you sit on that too intently, you could end up with a mix that we saw in Games 4 or 7, where he kept hitters off balance with secondary pitches. The slider and the changeup may not appear at all, or they could be his go-to offerings. Hitters have an idea but never know for sure which Varland is coming out of the bullpen.
Some days he has three or four pitches. Some days he has two. Even then, you don’t know which two they’ll be, and that livewire fastball is always in the back of your mind.
Varland was the only pitcher trusted to tangle with a star Mariner four times. He went a perfect 4-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts, a flyout, and a grounder to third against Julio Rodríguez. The backbone of his approach was clear: feed Rodríguez a heavy diet of curveballs and see if he’d get himself out.
In Game 1, Varland got ahead with a borderline call on a first-pitch curveball. Rodríguez was clearly thinking about an off-speed pitch when he watched a fastball knife through the heart of the plate for strike three. In Game 2, Varland threw exclusively curveballs, generating three whiffs, including two on pitches out of the zone.
In Game 3, with Rodríguez fully aware of the plan to lean on the curveball, Varland decided to mix in a slider. Rodríguez, sitting on a breaking pitch, finally caught one in the zone and cut it loose. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t the exact pitch he was banking on, resulting in a fly ball to left with a .110 xBA. In Game 4, Rodríguez got three more curveballs, none in the zone, and swung at two of them. An amped-up Rodríguez swung out of his shoes with two runners on, getting himself out in the process. It’s the same thing that happened at the top of the ninth against Hoffman, too.
Rodríguez never saw another fastball after his first matchup with Varland. His strikeout looking in that at-bat set the table for the rest of the series, as Rodríguez was always ready to unleash on a pitch that he didn’t get and too eager to swing on what he did. He saw one slider that led to weak contact. He barely saw any strikes. Varland got the desired results by employing a variety of his pitches, leaning on their interplay from one game to the next.
In the end, the Blue Jays should feel convicted in their approach. The offense broke through as the Mariners bullpen started to crack. Matt Brash and Eduard Bazardo are two-pitch pitchers. Gabe Speier is a three-pitch pitcher but in two of his ALCS appearances, he threw a third pitch type just once (a sinker in Game 1 and a slider in Game 5). The rest of the bullpen danced out of danger while Varland morphed into a new pitcher from night to night. The offense was able to break through, finally locking in on one pitch that changed history. You give good hitters enough chances and that’s what can happen.
Expect the Toronto bullpen to be playing the same tune in the World Series against the star-studded Dodgers. The game will present redemption opportunities for Little and Fluharty given the left-handed bats in the LA lineup; Eric Lauer will have his place too. It’s going to be a team effort.
The one thing you can count on at this point is that Varland is the exception that proves the rule. The Jays don’t want to have a reliever facing the same guys over and over and over. It’s a strategy that cost them Game 5 and nearly the AL Pennant. If they have to, however, you know they’re calling on the guy with electric stuff and a few cards up his sleeve.
It makes Varland one of the most important characters in what’s shaping up to be a fabulous World Series.
