OverDrive - Braden on the Blue Jays' bullpen choices, the importance of change and Springer's elite season

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Baseball Is Dead Podcast Host and Former MLB Pitcher Dallas Braden joined OverDrive to discuss the viewpoints of the Blue Jays' bullpen throughout the season, Jeff Hoffman's inconsistent play, the importance of changing pitchers, George Springer's impressive season and more.

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Loud, crowd, and all yours. No passports required, just press play. Tap into Made in Canada now on iHeartRadio.ca. Or the free iHeartRadio app. Here is a former MLB pitcher, and of course you can catch him on the baseball as dead podcast joining us on the Maple Toyota Hotline. Here's Dallas Braden. What's happening?

Dallas. How are we doing, boys? We're doing well. We've been talking a lot about the bullpen up here, and the numbers have not been good for the better part of a month. Since the end of July, it's one of the worst, you know, one or two bullpins in baseball based on, you know, team ERA. Hoffman got rocked last night, blows a save. He's given up 12 home runs this year.

how important is it over the next four or five weeks for John Snyder and the Blue Jays to find some semblance of a bullpen they can trust going into the playoffs? Imperative. This is when the arm race begins, whether it's identifying in-house options, right? Because the opportunity to go and get some help outside of your building has come and gone. And when it's in-house, I'm talking is there options, are there options, excuse me, by virtue of an extension of the bullpen in AAA? Are there guys in the rotation in AAA that you could think about,

bring it up and maybe impacting the bullpen because you're right. As far as how this bullpen is performed for the Blue Jays, you go back to July 28th, just an arbitrary date, which I picked up while I was listening to you guys kind of touch on some of the shortcomings. The Blue Jays have the second worst bullpen ERA in baseball at 5.72 behind only the Colorado Rockies who play baseball on Mars.

So it is tough to win ball games. It's tough to win close ball games. And it's tough to win important ball games if you just cannot get the most important outs in the ball game, which is, number one, the ones you need to get when you have the lead, and especially when you have the lead, the last three outs of the ball game. So whether it's identifying a combination, a platoon of arms that you feel like you can run out there and match up because I heard you guys talking about you know are you just at this point

Pock committed to Hoffman who you know leads the bullpen with 28th stage that is just based on the opportunities but is there a combination of matching up you know you got a couple of lefties down there in that bullpen and whether or not you feel like those guys can help split the difference on whether it's finishing off the eighth inning

and heading into the ninth inning starting the ninth inning and look you get you get the three that you're going to get, and if it goes any further than that, we already have somebody playing catch by the time you've taken the ball on the game now, you know, there's going to have to be some sort of shaking out, though, because down the stretch, this is where teams can either close the gap or, I believe, start to collapse because we know that it's bullpins that start to peter out when it comes September, and that's because of usage over exposure, and this is when your money is earned. And that's why it is

so important to have at least the last six outs accounted for, and I don't mean to just say you've got to have the closer identified. Sure, that helps, but you have to have an attack plan on how to secure the win. Dallas, are you familiar with in your experience a reset for the group and or the reset for an individual when they're in the bullpen at this time of year? Absolutely, because what you can do is you decompress an individual, mental process and you allow them to simplify it. You allow them to dumb things down because a lot of times what happens is at this point, you become mentally exhausted long before. You might be physically exhausted. And those two things do go hand in hand because if you feel like mentally you're

just not up for the challenge or the challenge seems so great, well now physically are you going to respond? Are you as eager to try to face the adversity head on? And so I think finding yourself in the bullpen is a wonderful opportunity to maximize your stuff as a pitcher because now we're talking about going out and performing in a short burst and you have the ability you now give the manager flexibility right you give schneider flexibility on how to be able to utilize you and if you have starting pedigree and you've been built up to serve an extended role well now we're talking about one individual covering four five six plus outs and he becomes almost a another reliever of sorts in that bullpen because we're not asking him to flip the lineup two or three

times. We're asking him to get as many outs in a row as he can. And if that's five, six, eight, so be it. If you look at the Jay's bullpen and then at some point, you know, John Schneider and company decide that Hoffman's not going to be the guy or we tried the reset and we just can't trust him come playoff time in this high leverage situation. You don't go there. Is there an obvious candidate? for you when you look at the Jay's pullpen as far as who could be a guy who could close out a game? I mean, is there any thought?

I mean, this is where you're starting to think about the kind of swing and miss you're looking for in big spots, right? Because that's what you're looking for in high leverage situations. That's what you're looking for when you're trying to get the most important outs of the game is how can I dominate

the bat. That's what I need to be able to take care of. So when you think about that, you think about swing and miss. I mean, Is Sir Anthony Dominguez an option? Is it Varlane? And that's where I think when you start to talk about playing the hot hand, I think you really, at this point in time, you're just trying to see who can continue to put together good outings after good outings.

Who's stringing together the outings with the least amount of traffic that is giving us a chance to go out and dominate the last three outs. So I think in terms of opportunities, those are a couple guys you might start to take a look at. with Dallas Braden, in terms of, you know, starters potentially moving there. Again, the J's, they're in a really good spot. You know, they still got a good buffer in the American League. They got a good buffer in terms of a top two seed in the American League period. I should say buffer on the ALE East and then in terms of the American League

and trying to finish in one of those top two spots. But they're shifting their rotation around a little bit. They have a six-man rotation. Lauer's going tonight. They're going to push Burrios back. He has not pitched well recently. So when Milwaukee's in town this weekend, they're going Bieber, Goss. Scherzer. I think if they're healthy, that's your one, two, three. I think they're

tipping their hand at what likely is going to be their starting rotation for the first three games of a playoff series, which means Barrios, Bassett, maybe Lauer, who's the left, who's been very good. But let's push him aside for a second. Of Barrios and Bassett, either of those guys, both of those guys, you know, can you see them possibly contributing at all in a bullpen role come the playoffs? I absolutely think you can't and I think it's probably I mean again just kind of go into who's going to who's going to give you an opportunity to generate swing and miss who's going to give you an opportunity to give you a link well I think both those guys kind of serve that purpose to an extent and and I think it's really going to be about the individual matchups that you're going to be getting who's going to perform better in that role I think what you're doing is you're you're really splitting hairs between who you're identifying as competitors because is it virios who you have more confidence in to generate the swing and miss? Well, I don't think so because

he's not a strikeout per nine kind of guy right now, right? He's not a strikeout an inning per guy right now where Chris Bassett may be a little closer to that, but is that going to be ultimately the biggest difference maker for you? You know, I mean, in terms of keeping the ball in the yard, both these guys have surrendered 22 homers a pop. So I think it's really, really just a matter of what the opponent looks like and who you're going to be able to rely on in that moment. What do the matchups say? Because that's where, and I hate to really start to get into the weeds here, but when you think about Chris Bassett and some of the arm angles that he creates and some of the different movement he's generating with these different

arm angles and how funky he is, that can be tough as opposed to Barrios. Well, now he's pretty much a one-playing guy in terms of arm angle. And so if you have a guy who can kind of disrupt swing plane at the plate and offer different looks, that's an option. So I think Bassett very well may be the leader in the clubhouse out of that starting rotation to make an impact. Dallas, I'm interested in know the relationship and dynamic between starting pitchers and the relievers. Let's say a starter goes through an evening and has a decent night, hands off the ball,

and then the game ends, you know, in a loss, or vice versa. The starters are really, you know, over-extending the relievers. What kind of that dynamic look like between those two groups? Oh, it absolutely exists because as a starting pitcher, you go out there, you lay an egg, as we say early on in the ballgame. You've given up a three, four spot in the first couple of innings. And you know now your job has shifted sort of from trying to continue to dominate a lineup because that didn't work out.

So now what do you got to do? Well, you've got to get out. And you've got to give that bullpen an opportunity to get to some of the important guys down there. And when I say important, I mean the high leverage out getters, not the guys that you run out there in the fourth and fifth inning. I've been that mop-up dude before, and I know what that's like. So you want to avoid that at all costs. And that means what you're doing ultimately is giving your offense a chance to climb back into the game, if you can keep the score kind of where it's at, but you're giving your bullpen a chance to breathe.

You're not asking them to cover, you know, 18 outs. And that's really, really important because, I mean, you know, 369, 12, 15. there's your five-inning performance, and now you're still asking the bullpen to cover the remainder, and that's quite a few outs still. So the further you can get into the game, the better. And then on the bullpen side of things, when your starter goes out there and puts together a gem, right, gives you seven innings plus worth of outstanding baseball, maybe just a run, if anything, and then you come in and you end up putting guys on base, you're walking a couple

people you give up a double you give up a homer and it feels like all your starter's hard work has gone for not and now you a high leverage guy aren't available the next day because you've just spent 35 bullets trying to get yourself out of this mess and things just go awry quickly so as a starter you never want to put your bullpen in a situation where they have to cover any more outs where they're exposing guys because then you start to think about you know you get guys out there who have given you three four innings and they're going to get sent down now you're changing you're changing paychecks, and it's all because as a starter, you just couldn't get the job done. That is a terrible feeling.

With Dallas-Breaton. So let me run through the top five in Major League Baseball OPS on-Base Plus slugging. To no one's surprise, that number one, Aaron Judge, number two, Shohay Otani, number three, Cal Raleigh, number four, Kyle Schwerber. Number five, George Springer. George Springer is fifth in baseball with a 930 OPS. He had two home runs again last night. When you talk about him daily, I'll give the floor to you, Dallas. What more can you say about a veteran like this who was awful the last two years?

Terrible. And the guy's been phenomenal this season. It's incredible. And that's the point, right? It's kind of been an MIA thing. Like, hey, George, where have you been? Not Joe DiMaggio. Where's George Springer been?

And it's now a guy that is squarely in the middle of the lineup, sometimes at the top of it. quite literally. And that's where you have somebody who's setting the tone, setting the table, but you have somebody who has been reliable. You need pieces like that in the lineup to be consistent. You need guys that you can regularly

depend on in terms of what you can expect from their at bat. And from at bat to a bat, George Springer, you just laid it out, has been as good as you could hope for. I mean, and just to kind of zoom out a little, the J's, as a group, second best OPS in all of baseball.

I mean, the ninth most extra base hits. They've got the 13th most home runs in baseball. So, I mean, George Springer is a big part of what is pushing that, what is motivating that offense. So when you have guys like Boba Chet, who you know are going to make a run, it feels like at 200 hits, you know, every year. And you have a guy like Vlad, who,

whether it feels like it's been a down year or it's a resurgent bounce back year, it feels like he just quietly gets his numbers. And at the end, I mean, we're talking about a guy who's flirting with 300 in terms of average. He'll probably get to that 30 homer mark. He's going to need to do some work here this last month. But I think that's well within reach. So George Springer, being who he is right now is almost like getting a former George Springer who he was.

I think when the Js initially signed him what they had hoped for, this is what you're getting now. You know, George Springer, Dalton Vars show. there's a lot of really good defensive players on this Jay's team, and they've been a good defensive team this season. I'm just curious from, like, a player's point of view, when you're kind of critiquing other teams around the league, you're going to talk about hitting, you're going to talk about the rotation, you're talking about a bullpen,

like where does how good a team is defensively kind of rank on the priority list when you're talking about, man, I wouldn't want to play that team come playoff time because they're good defensively. How high up is that? Well, it matters because of the things that we were kind of just talking about where if you're a team that's not going to generate a ton of whiff and the ball is going to be in play, you're going to need the boys behind you to play catch. That's going to be important. You have to be able to turn these weekly hit baseballs into outs. And even if they're not weekly hit, that's where defensive positioning comes into play, which is really more of a credit to the staff and their preparation in the analytic department doing their homework.

but they have to be able to get that information to the staff. They have to disseminate that to the players. The players have to then go out and execute. So it is a priority in-house without a question. It absolutely matters. Can we turn ball in play to outs? Again, that's what we're after, right? Scoring at least just one more run than the other guy, and we've got to get our outs.

We have to do that. We can't give away outs. We can't give these opponents extra outs. And so playing catch as simple as you can boil it down to is paramount. And I think if you don't have the ability to do that, then you're really starting to flirt with fire because late in the ball game, what happens? The at-bats really start to ratchet up. The ball and play becomes an emphasis. And I always say from a reliever's perspective, there are three things that you must do as a reliever.

And this starts to become all the more important once we get into the post. season and that's you have to come and spin the break ball for strikes you have to control the running game but you have to be able to defend yourself you have to field your position as well because the last two innings you see teams more than willing to try to trade outs for 90 feet and if you are somebody who's going to end up throwing it off the forehead of the popcorn guy in the fifth row well that's that's going to be a problem you're not reliable so we got to turn and we've got to turn balls and play into outs. Absolutely.

Great catching up with you, Dallas, as always, man. It's going to be a fun stretch run. We're almost into September. I'm sure we'll do it again soon. Thank you for this. No problem. Hold on tight, boys. Down the stretch you come.

Absolutely. There's Dallas Braden. The Baseball is Dead podcast, joining us here on the Maple Toyota Hotline, drive the built-in-Canada, fuel-efficient, fun to drive. Toyota, Rav4. Gas or Hybrid Models available. Visit mapletoida.com. Canadian.

It's the music that raised you. The artists raising the bar. Hi, this is Brian Adams. Hey, my name's Brett Emmons. I'm from The Glorious Sons. Hi, I'm Nellie Fittato. Made in Canada, the station that champions Canadian music. Loud, crowd, and all yours.

No passports required, just press play. Tap into Made in Canada now on iHeartRadio.ca. Or the free iHeartRadio app.