ANAHEIM, Calif. – The Toronto Blue Jays plan to “re-evaluate” Jeff Hoffman’s status as closer while they consider ways to get the struggling right-hander back to form. Manager John Schneider added Wednesday morning that he didn’t want to make a knee-jerk decision after pulling Hoffman from another difficult inning Tuesday, in which he allowed a run on two singles and two hit by pitches to threaten a three-run lead. Louis Varland induced a double-play ball from Nolan Schanuel to secure Tuesday’s 4-2 win, leaving questions about how to handle Hoffman moving forward after a third rough outing in his last four appearances.“We’ll re-evaluate everything, talk with him, see how he’s doing. He’s going through it, obviously a little bit,” said Schneider. “We’ll see (about his role). Use the off-day (Thursday) to talk about it with him.”At the centre of those discussions will be what Hoffman needs to get right. The 33-year-old’s raw underlying numbers – including a 100th percentile whiff rate of 46.1 per cent; a 99thpercentile strikeout rate of 42.1 per cent; and a 96th percentile chase rate of 40.6 per cent – suggest a dominant start to the season. But the real outcomes have been anything but, having allowed 11 runs, nine earned, on 16 hits and six walks over 10.2 innings. He’s also blown three save opportunities and surrendered a go-ahead grand slam in the eighth inning of a 2-2 game Saturday. Identifying reasons behind that divergence is the priority, while Schneider “continues to show support for him, like I’m always going to do, no matter what the outcome, and try to put him in spots to have success.” “He’s a big boy. He understands that the spotlight’s on him a little bit and rightfully so,” Schneider continued. “How can we be there to support you? How can we help you get ahead of hitters? Is it mechanical? Is it between the ears a little bit? What’s going on and how can we help?”While the Blue Jays generally like to give players working through struggles opportunity to correct, that becomes more difficult when it comes to pitchers working the ninth inning, given the immediate consequences of a poor performance. Schneider correctly noted that “there are always other things that can directly dictate the outcome of the game, whether it’s a play, whether it’s a pitch, whether it’s a caught stealing, whether it’s a hit,” but conceded “runway always gets a little bit different for starting pitchers and closers.”On Tuesday, the situation worked out “where Louis was available to shorten that runway, and there are going to be days where that’s not the case for whoever’s out there,” he continued. “You just make the best decision that you can, watch what the guys are doing. That inning started off very innocently. And then after the first hit by pitch, your radar goes up and then after the second one, it was like, all right, let’s figure this out here.”Part of that is finding opportune times to give Hoffman needed reps.After Saturday’s outing went awry, he closed out Monday’s 5-2 win against the Angels without issue and entering with a 4-1 lead Tuesday presented another, what Schneider saw as a relatively low-leverage outing, even if it was a third time pitching in four games.“I wanted to get him out there again, hopefully close out a game again, and then he would have two days off and maybe reset a little bit. That’s how I was thinking of it,” said Schneider. “He hadn’t seen them. Louis saw that part of the order the night before. So you like that, too. All those things go into the equation.”Varland is the obvious candidate to cover for Hoffman in the ninth, although there’s a cost to removing him from a critical set-up role, entering at various points of high leverage. Using Baseball Reference’s game leverage index, his score of 2.36 – 1.0 is average leverage – easily tops the Blue Jays, with Hoffman at 1.62, behind only the optioned Brendon Little.“It’s great that he’s so versatile,” Schneider said of Varland. “The ninth inning is different. I don’t care what anyone says. Louis came into a dumpster fire (Tuesday) and did really well. But even if it’s a three-run lead with a clean inning, the ninth inning is the ninth inning, and you have to have a certain mindset to do it. I try to put the guys you trust the most in the biggest spots. So it depends on where they are in the order. It depends on the feel of the game and the situation a little bit. And you’re kind of counting backwards the times you want certain guys to face certain parts of the lineup. You kind of just balance it out.”