Jeff Hoffman may not be with the Toronto Blue Jays anymore, but he was up to his old tricks with the Minnesota Twins this weekend.
The 33-year-old reliever had become notorious in Toronto for blowing games in the late innings, most infamously allowing a game-tying home run in the top of the ninth of Game 7 of last year's World Series.
This season looked no different before he lost his closer's role and was shipped to Minnesota at last week's trade deadline.
In his third game with the Twins, Hoffman allowed two hits and one earned run in a 3-3 eighth-inning deadlock against Milwaukee, a run that stood up as the game-winner.
That's not the debut Minnesota was hoping for after acquiring him, though his overall body of work still shows real ability. His 80 strikeouts this season rank third in the league among relievers.
Hoffman's season line with Toronto and Minnesota combined sits at a 3.88 ERA across 54 appearances, with a real track record of solid stretches mixed in among the rough outings.
Why one bad outing keeps overshadowing the good ones
His first two games in Minnesota went exactly to plan, a pair of shutout innings that suggested a change of scenery might genuinely help.
But this latest blown lead reinforces the same pattern that plagued him in Toronto, one big collapse capable of erasing the memory of everything that went right before it.
It's a bit like a talented employee whose one bad presentation somehow gets remembered longer than months of solid, quiet work.
Does this outing simply reflect the normal volatility every reliever deals with, or does it confirm Hoffman's real issue was never about location, but about finding consistency regardless of the uniform?
Minnesota still has time to see a great tenure from Hoffman, but he'll need to find the kind of reliability that eluded him in Toronto if that's actually going to happen.
Do you think Jeff Hoffman ever finds real consistency as a reliever?
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