Reports emerged back in December that the Phillies had interest in re-signing free agent reliever Jeff Hoffman, before Hoffman eventually landed with the Blue Jays on a three-year, $33MM contract. Phils president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski confirmed the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Scott Lauber and other reporters this week that the club indeed had interest in a reunion with the All-Star, and “very aggressively” made an offer seemingly in range of Toronto’s offer early in the season.
“I can’t tell you that the number he ended up signing for was substantially different than the one that we ended up offering him,” Dombrowski said. “But he wasn’t prepared to take that at that time. [Hoffman’s agents] just thought they were going to get much more.”
Hoffman technically did land more in two other offers — a three-year, $40MM agreement with the Orioles, and then a five-year deal with the Braves in the $45MM-48MM range that would’ve brought the righty more in overall value, if not average annual value. However, Baltimore and Atlanta both walked away from those deals due to misgivings over Hoffman’s medicals. The Braves’ issue wasn’t made public, but the Orioles had a concern over Hoffman’s right shoulder. Notably, the O’s weren’t troubled enough to abandon their pursuit of Hoffman entirely, and made a new offer after taking their $40MM offer off the table.
As all of this was taking place in early January, the Phillies didn’t re-engage in Hoffman’s market, Lauber writes. It didn’t appear to be out of injury concern, but rather that the Phillies had seemingly just moved on to another late-game bullpen option. A month earlier, the Phils instead signed Jordan Romano to a one-year, $8.5MM deal, in what became an unofficial swap of closers between the Phillies and Blue Jays. Dombrowski indicated at the end of last season and again this week that Philadelphia would only be re-signing one at most of Hoffman and Carlos Estevez, and the team ended up going with Romano over either of the free agent duo.
“We just moved off [Hoffman] and did Romano because we thought [Orion] Kerkering was ready to step up and, I don’t want to say take on more because his role has been important, but pitch more at the back and high leverage,” Dombrowski told Lauber and company this week.
The Athletic’s Matt Gelb paints a different picture of Philadelphia’s talks with Hoffman, as sources tell Gelb that the Phillies told agents that they were looking for relievers who would sign for one-year contracts. This would naturally run entirely counter to Dombrowski’s claim of an offer in the three-year, $33MM range, and Gelb isn’t sure if the Phillies presented Hoffman with a formal offer whatsoever. While the team did keep checking in Hoffman in the first month of the offseason, Gelb (like Lauber) writes that the Phillies stopped pursuing Hoffman once Romano was in the fold.
While we’re only a month into the 2025 season, the early returns on the Phillies’ decision haven’t been promising. Philadelphia is near the bottom of the league in bullpen ERA, even despite superb numbers posted by closer Jose Alvarado and set-up man Matt Strahm. Alvarado has quickly assumed closer duties since Romano has struggled to a 13.50 ERA in his first 9 1/3 innings as a Phillie, and Kerkering also has a 5.79 ERA in 9 1/3 frames of work this year. Since we’re still dealing with small sample sizes here, it is worth noting that most of Kerkering’s damage took place in two rough outings this past week, though Romano has already allowed multiple runs over four of his outings.
Hoffman, meanwhile, has excelled in the first full-time closing assignment of his 10 MLB seasons. The right-hander is a perfect 6-for-6 in save changes and has a 1.35 ERA over 13 1/3 innings for Toronto, with an eye-opening 39.6% strikeout rate and 2.1% walk rate. Even with the caveats of a 92.1% strand rate and a .259 BABIP, Hoffman’s 1.16 SIERA is even lower than his already incredible ERA, further enhancing just how dominant Hoffman has been this year.
Should he keep pitching at anywhere near this level, Hoffman’s performance could lead to some second-guessing in Baltimore, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. Turning to the Phillies in particular, Lauber feels the team will again find itself having to acquire some significant bullpen help before the trade deadline, perhaps with a particular aim of improving the relief corps’ strikeout numbers.
