Louis Varland just gave the Blue Jays the kind of season that usually makes a front office cling tightly to a pitcher. Instead, it may be the exact season that makes him the club’s best trade piece.
Varland’s numbers were eye-popping. He sat in the 96th percentile in K%, the 94th percentile in GB%, and the 96th percentile in barrels allowed, which checked in at just 3.7%. His Baseball Savant page, as the source puts it, looked like “rare steak red.”
But Toronto can’t let the shiny surface blind it to the bigger picture. Varland’s 1.27 ERA was more than a run better than his 2.37 xERA, even if that xERA still landed in the 99th percentile. That kind of season makes him valuable - maybe more valuable than ever - but also makes him the kind of player a team should consider moving while the market is hottest.
The Blue Jays need more than a lockdown ninth-inning answer. They need offense, especially power, and they need starting pitching.
Toronto had one hitter, Kazuma Okamoto, who topped 15 home runs. On the mound, the one starter the club can truly trust is Dylan Cease, and he ended the year on the injured list with shoulder inflammation.
His offseason recovery plan includes a visit to an Indian ashram for meditation and yoga, which sounds fascinating but doesn’t exactly settle the nerves.
That’s the basic tension here: Toronto came close to winning the World Series in 2025, but the longer view is less flattering. The Blue Jays finished last in the AL East in two of the past three seasons.
They don’t need a teardown. They need a reload.
Varland could be the piece that helps them do it.
His contract only strengthens the argument. As a Super Two, Varland will be eligible for arbitration this offseason and then go through four years of arbitration before reaching free agency in 2030. MLB Trade Rumors projects his 2027 salary in the $4M range, which makes him a bargain and also broadens the list of teams that could fit him into their plans.
If Toronto did move him, the closest recent comparison is the Padres’ 2025 deal for Mason Miller, when San Diego sent MLB Pipeline’s then- and still overall No. 3 prospect, Leo De Vries, to the Athletics.
Still, any discussion of trading a closer has to wrestle with the postseason reality that Blue Jays fans watched in Game 7 of the 2025 World Series. A lockdown ninth-inning arm matters.
But the Dodgers also showed that a reliever’s role can change fast. Roki Sasaki worked as their closer in the 2025 playoffs after a regular season in which he was a shaky starter with a 4.46 ERA, 5.80 FIP, and 22 walks in 36 innings.
In October, he turned into a weapon, recording three saves, two holds, and a 0.71 ERA.
There’s also the simple truth that closers break down. They can fall off faster than bungee jumpers.
Sometimes it’s performance, sometimes it’s injury, and often it’s the price of throwing as hard and as often as they do. Jordan Romano is the cautionary Toronto example: an All-Star for the second straight year in 2023 with 36 saves, then just 13.2 innings and a 6.59 ERA in 2024, with ERAs of 8.23 and 5.61 across the last two seasons.
The wider trend isn’t much kinder. Among closers who saved 30 or more games in 2025, those relievers combined for 279 saves in 2025 and 161 in 2026, a 43% drop driven by injuries, ineffectiveness, and role changes.
Even so, the case for moving Varland isn’t built on the idea that closers don’t matter. WAR may not fully capture what a dominant ninth inning does to a team’s psychology, or how it shapes a manager’s bullpen choices.
But the gap between an elite closer and an elite starter or position player is still massive. On the Blue Jays, Cease posted a Fangraphs WAR of 5.5, while Varland finished at 3.1.
That’s the heart of it. Fangraphs had Mason Miller as the top closer by WAR, with Varland second.
Yet Miller ranked 61st overall, behind starters like Ranger Suarez and Trevor Rogers. Varland came in 97th, four spots behind Kevin Gausman and one spot ahead of Brewers outfielder Garrett Mitchell, who hit .262/.354/.416 with 11 home runs.
Even Mariano Rivera, the only unanimously elected first-ballot Hall of Famer in baseball history and the gold standard at the position, finished with a career Fangraphs WAR that was roughly 10% less than Dave Stieb’s.
Toronto may already have a possible successor waiting. Spencer Miles, a Rule 5 pick with just 14.2 career minor league innings and none above A-ball, emerged as a do-everything arm for the Blue Jays. He worked as an opener, starter, middle reliever, and even closed a couple of times when Varland was unavailable.
Miles missed all of 2023 and 2024 with injuries, so asking him to handle a full starter’s workload could be risky. But in relief, he was excellent, going 6-0 with a 1.71 ERA and 1.01 WHIP. As a starter, he went 0-2 with a 5.73 ERA.
And if that sounds too optimistic, the source points out that Varland was already being discussed as an in-house closer option back when Hoffman struggled in April, when Varland had only one career save.
Miles now has two career saves. By that logic, he’s twice as good.
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