Why the Toronto Blue Jays Should Sell High on Louis Varland
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Louis Varland was arguably the best reliever in baseball this season.
That is exactly why the Blue Jays should trade him.
Please hear me out before you declare me higher than the CN Tower.
There are three reasons Toronto should trade Varland now, when his value will never be higher.
1). Relievers are more volatile than Bitcoin.
2) Closers are not as valuable as many believe.
3). Relievers, including Varland himself, frequently emerge from unexpected places — failed starters, middle relievers, prospects converted from starters to relievers.
None of this is meant to throw shade at Varland.
He is the Fabio of stud closers, and it was not a fluke. He was in the 96th percentile in K%, the 94th percentile in GB%, and the 96th percentile in barrels allowed, at just 3.7%.
You will not see a Baseball Savant page with more rare steak red.
That said, his ERA of 1.27 was more than a run below his Baseball Savant xERA of 2.37. The xERA was still in the 99th percentile, so incredibly good, but don't expect a 1.27 ERA again.
Toronto needs offense, especially power, and starting pitching more than it needs an elite closer.
The Blue Jays had one batter, Kazuma Okamoto, who hit more than 15 home runs.
They have one starter they can truly count on, Dylan Cease, and he finished the season on the injured list with shoulder inflammation. His offseason recovery plans include visiting an Indian ashram for meditation and yoga. That sounds really cool, but it is not particularly confidence-inspiring.
The beer-mug, half-full view is that the Blue Jays came oh so close to winning the World Series in 2025; the sober reality is that they finished last in the AL East in two of the past three seasons.
They do not need to rebuild, but they do need to reload. That's why they should trade Louis Varland.
Varland is more valuable to Toronto's future as a trade chip to fill other needs than as their closer. And his value will never be higher.
His team-friendly contract not only makes him more valuable but also expands the number of teams Toronto could trade him to.
As a "Super Two," Varland will be eligible for arbitration this offseason. He will have four years of arbitration before becoming a free agent in 2030. MLB Trade Rumors projects his 2027 salary in the $4M ballpark, a clear bargain for the Blue Jays compared with what he would make on the open market.
If the Blue Jays traded Varland, the closest recent comparable is the Padres' 2025 trade for closer Mason Miller. San Diego traded MLB Pipeline's then- and still overall No. 3 prospect, Leo De Vries, to the Athletics.
Blue Jays fans will understandably cite Game 7 of the 2025 World Series as Exhibit A for why a lockdown closer is critical.
But the Dodgers used Roki Sasaki as their closer in the 2025 playoffs. In the regular season, he was an unsteady starter with a 4.46 ERA, 5.80 FIP, and 22 walks in 36 innings, and then became a lights-out closer in the postseason with three saves, two holds, and a 0.71 ERA.
The Blue Jays also might have an in-house replacement for Varland.
He came out of nowhere, too. More on him later.
Closers Can Fall Off Quickly
Closers can fall off a cliff faster than bungee jumpers.
Sometimes that is due to performance and other times to injury. The unfortunate reality is that many pitchers who throw as hard and as often as Varland do end up on the injured list.
Jordan Romano is a recent example in Toronto. In 2023, he was an All-Star for the second consecutive year, with 36 saves. In 2024, he pitched 13.2 innings with a 6.59 ERA, posting ERAs of 8.23 and 5.61 in the last two seasons. He is but one example.
If you broaden the lens to all closers who saved 30 or more games in 2025, those relievers saved 279 games in 2025 and 161 in 2026, a 43% decline due to a combination of injuries, ineffectiveness, and role changes (in some cases from switching teams).
Elite closers are not as valuable as many believe
I will start by saying I think WAR undervalues closers because of the psychological toll that blowing late leads takes on a team. Not all innings are created equal. The ninth is different. Having a lockdown closer also changes how a manager deploys his bullpen and gives a team confidence.
That said, an elite position player or starter is worth far more than an elite closer. For example, on the Blue Jays, Dylan Cease had a Fangraphs WAR of 5.5, while Varland's was 3.1.
Fangraphs ranks Mason Miller as the top closer by WAR, with Varland second. Overall, though, Miller ranks just 61st in WAR behind starters like Ranger Suarez and Trevor Rogers.
Varland ranks 97th, four spots behind old friend Kevin Gausman. Just ahead of him at 96 was Brewers outfielder Garrett Mitchell, who slashed .262/.354/.416 with 11 home runs.
Type of Player | Average fWAR of Top 10 Players |
|---|---|
Position Player | 6.44 |
Starting Pitcher | 5.58 |
Relief Pitcher including closers | 2.62 |
Mariano Rivera is the only unanimously voted first-ballot Hall of Famer in baseball history and is widely considered the best closer ever. His career Fangraphs WAR (fWAR) is roughly 10% less than Dave Stieb's.
Closers often emerge from nowhere
Let's now switch to selfie view and look at closers like Varland with 30-or-more saves in 2026, and how many career saves they had entering 2026.
Four of the eleven relievers with 30-plus saves emerged in 2026 despite little or no prior closing experience. A fifth, Cade Smith, had closed for a few months in 2025 after being an elite setup reliever.
Bryan Baker, Riley O'Brien, Louis Varland, and Jacob Latz saved 154 games in 2026 combined. They had a combined total of 11 saves entering 2026.
Speaking of relievers who emerged in 2026, the Blue Jays might already have Varland's heir apparent in-house in Spencer Miles. Miles came out of nowhere as a Rule 5 pick with 14.2 career minor league innings split and none above A-ball.
The Blue Jays deployed him as a Swiss Army knife, appearing as an opener, starter, middle reliever, and even a couple of times as a closer when Varland was unavailable.
Miles missed all of 2023 and 2024 with injuries, and asking him to take on a full starter's workload could be asking for trouble. Miles was also excellent in relief, going 6-0 with a 1.71 ERA and 1.01 WHIP, nearly Varland-esque. All while going 0-2 with a 5.73 ERA as a starter.
And just in case you still think I am higher than the CN Tower, I suggested Varland as an excellent in-house option at closer when Hoffman struggled in April. At the time, Varland had only one career save.
Miles has two career saves, so he will undoubtedly be twice as good.
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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.