How an Unlikely Influence Helped Blue Jays’ Louis Varland Become an All-Star
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Nobody becomes a Major League Baseball All-Star alone.
There is a wife back in California doing 2 a.m. feedings of a newborn while her husband toils away in a ballpark in Florida. There is a father who coached his son in Little League, and a mother and a sister who sat through travel ball tournaments in the heat of July in Georgia. A pitching coach helped the player develop the pitch that unlocked his potential.
In the case of Louis Varland, there is also Shohei Ohtani.
Dave Roberts shared a story in December with a Japanese media outlet doing a profile of Ohtani's good works off the field. He shared that one of Ohtani's teammates' mothers needed treatment for cancer, and Ohtani quietly made a 'very, very big' contribution towards paying for the treatment.
"Ironically, that player we had, his brother, pitched for the Blue Jays in the World Series. And I saw the mom during the World Series, and I said, 'How are you doing?' And she said, 'The cancer is gone.' Gone. Shohei does a lot of great things, but a lot of what he does is on the down low."Dave Roberts, Dodgers Manage
The player Roberts refers to as a teammate was Louis's brother, Gus, now with the Washington Nationals. The Blue Jays pitcher was Louis Varland.
Being unable to afford ridiculously expensive cancer treatments for a sick mother has to weigh on a player shuttling between Triple-A and the Majors.
In 2024, when Ohtani provided help, Varland was pitching for Minnesota. In 16 games with the Twins, he pitched to an 0-6 record, 7.61 ERA, and 1.69 WHIP, allowing a staggering 68 hits and 12 home runs on the way to a -1.3 bWAR over 49.2 innings.
Two years later, Varland is an All-Star along with teammates Ernie Clement and Dylan Cease. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was selected by the fans but will not be playing in tonight's game to rest his back.
And not just any All-Star. He is having one of the best seasons of any closer ever. Since 1985, roughly when the modern closer primarily started pitching only in the ninth inning, Varland ranks 8th among closers in ERA+ and is on pace for the 2nd-best bWAR, behind only Jonathan Papelbon's 2008 season.
It is worth noting that this compares Varland's stats to the full seasons of closers in prior years and assumes he performs similarly after the All-Star break to the high bar he has set prior to it.
It is also worth noting that Varland had to take the help he got, be open to feedback, put in the work, make the adjustments, and then perform on the field.
But nobody is completely self-made, so let's take a look at the support that helped make Louis Varland an All-Star.
Coaching Help Along The Way
In high school, Varland topped out around 85mph with sketchy command. Gus was playing at Concordia University, a Division II school in nearby St. Paul, MN.
Louis did not want to play with his brother. He wanted to play against him. So he wrote to the other schools in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference, which included the University of Mary, Minot State, Bemidji State, and the University of Minnesota Crookston, none of which are exactly LSU when it comes to baseball.
Nobody wrote back.
So Varland decided, well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and went to his hometown, Concordia University St. Paul, to play with Gus.
At Concordia, he worked with two coaches who were instrumental in his growth as a pitcher.
Louie worked on his velocity with Jon Gaub, a South St. Paul High School grad who played at the University of Minnesota and reached the majors with the Chicago Cubs, pitching in four games in 2011. He learned command from head coach Mark "Lunch" McKenzie's son, Marcus, a former assistant who managed the visitors' clubhouse at Target Field when Varland made his Major League debut there.
Because he was pitching for his hometown team McKenzie and another assistant who coached Varland, Neil Lerner, would talk to Louis after games and often text him the day after he pitched. Lerner shared with Tom Schreier of Zone Coverage, a local Minnesota sports outlet, that Varland recognized that he had not made it alone.
“You get him on that mound, and it’s different. He’s competing against you,” said Lerner. “But often he is just the nicest, hardest-working, easygoing [guy]. We’ll text him after games, and I talked to Gus for a while and Louie. ‘We don’t want to bother you, but we support you.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, you guys aren’t bothering me. You’re the reason we got here.’”
The feedback and adjustments continued after the Twins drafted Louis 449th overall (15th round) of the 2019 MLB Draft.
Martjin The Mechanic
Varland credits the Twins' player development staff, pitching coordinators, and pitching coaches with his fastball velocity increasing from the low 90s when he was drafted to the fourth-highest average velocity in the American League (98 mph) in 2025. He specifically cites an unconventional source of help, emblematic of the shift in pitching from art to science.
Enter Martijn Verhoeven, a PhD who earned degrees both at the Utrecht (Netherlands) University and the University of Georgia and had the title of assistant director of sports science. In 2021, Varland told David Liaurilia of Fangraphs, “I would put it to our pitching coordinators and the pitching coaches with my teams,” said Varland. “But also Martijn [Verhoeven], our [motion performance] coach. He really cleaned up my mechanics so that I could pitch with an efficient arm path. That was really the root of it all; everything has stemmed from that.”
Verhoeven worked with Varland to lower his arm slot, and Varland credits this both for his increased velocity and a cleaner, easier throwing motion that has helped him reduce the stress on his elbow and shoulder. The motion helped Varland become "Everyday Louie" in the 2025 playoffs, making a postseason-record 15 appearances in Toronto's 18 postseason games.
Coaching From the Blue Jays
When Varland arrived in Toronto last summer, pitching coach Pete Walker instructed him to drop his sinker and focus on developing a more complete repertoire outside of his fastball and curveball, which together he threw 83% of the time last season. This year, he is only throwing those two pitches 71% of the time and has a new weapon to go after left-handed batters in his changeup.
The Blue Jays staff also worked with him to throw his offspeed pitches harder, including the changeup, which averages nearly 93 mph and tunnels better with his 98.5 mph average four-seam fastball.
Having the changeup as a weapon against lefties is a big reason behind Varland's success. He has faced 101 left-handed batters and not given up a home run. He is throwing 17% changeups to left-handed batters. He has thrown 135 changeups, 126 of them to left-handed batters and yielded 4 hits, all singles, for a slugging percentage allowed of .114. Last year batters slugged .714 against his changeup.
This is no accident. Blue Jays coaches instructed him to loosen his grip on the changeup and drop his thumb.
He is no slouch against right-handed batters either, having yielded just one home run in 89 at bats.
The results have been incredible - a 99th percentile strikeout rate over 35% combined with a 96% groundball rate over 55%. He has been especially nasty with runners in scoring position, striking out 24 in 18 innings against just 3 walks and 6 hits for a 0.50 WHIP.
Most unconventionally is the 'velo slap' that bullpen coach Graham Johnson delivers to Varland after his last warmup pitch just before he enters the game.
Designed to improve the pitcher's focus and intensity, Sportsnet.ca's Shi David reported that the velo slap is a hard two-handed smack on the upper back. Varland had started using it in Minnesota and tried it with the Blue Jays' bullpen catcher, Alex Andreopoulos, in his second outing with the Jays.
The catcher basically shoved him, so bullpen coach Johnson volunteered to smack him the right way and has done it ever since.
Many players talk about coaches giving them a pat on the back or a kick in the butt. In this case, the two-handed smack on the back has helped spike Varland's adrenaline, but also keep his emotions in check on the mound.
His Parents Provided The Foundation
Varland's velocity reached the low 90s. His command improved, and he was drafted by his hometown Twins in the 15th round. While in the minors, during the offseason, he would sheetrock for his father, Wade's company, Varland's Drywall. McKenzie credits Wade with instilling a blue collar work ethic and intense competitiveness in both Louis and Gus.
His old college coach McKenzie, in the same Zone Coverage article, credits Wade and Kim with developing Louis and Gus's work ethic.
"Whatever we asked those guys to do, they went about it. And then they'd go home and sheetrock with their dad. And there's no doubt in my mind that those parents taught those kids the blue-collar work ethic,"
Facing Ohtani
Varland will not be facing Ohtani tonight. Ohtani was selected for the game as the National League's leading vote-getter, but will not be playing in Philly tonight due to left knee irritation.
The two did square off twice in the World Series last year, with Ohtani getting the better of it with singles in both at-bats. Louis Varland declined to comment about it for this story and has never publicly opened up about his mother's battle with her illness.
The great news is she is better. And she will no doubt be watching her son pitch in his first All-Star Game tonight.
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Adam Steinmetz writes about the Toronto Blue Jays for On SI. Adam is also the editor and publisher of the Boston Sunday Sports Section, a weekly digital publication covering the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins. A two-time winner of the Best Collegiate Sports Writer award in Philadelphia, he began his career with freelance work for The Philadelphia Daily News and The Palm Beach Post before building a successful career outside of journalism. He returned to sports writing last year, contributing to Pitcher List—including coverage of the Toronto Blue Jays—before launching Authorenticity on Substack, where he explores the human stories within baseball. The Boston Sunday Sports Section is his most ambitious project — the thinking fan’s modern Sunday Sports Section focused on the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins.