Top Landing Spots for Free Agent Jeff Hoffman
Coming off of a two-year run as one of baseball's best relievers, Jeff Hoffman is up for grabs on the open market. Which teams could use him the most?
The MLB offseason got off to a slow start this year, but as the baseball world reacts to Juan Soto’s record-breaking new deal, things have already been heating up in the background. Over the last week, a number of high-profile free agents have signed deals for 2025 and beyond, while trades have sent players moving around the league.
Still, top reliever Jeff Hoffman remains on the market.
After putting on an absolutely dominant performance in 2023, Hoffman somehow managed to out-do himself this past season, posting the best stats of his career. In 66.1 innings of work, the 31-year-old accumulated a 2.17 ERA, 0.96 WHIP, and 89 strikeouts in 2024, closing 10 of his 13 save opportunities. He earned the first All-Star nod of his career, and ranked in the 96th percentile of all qualified pitchers in both strikeout rate and whiff rate at 33.6% and 35.3%, respectively.
With his value at an all-time high, Hoffman is set to sign the biggest contract of his career out of free agency. Here are three teams who are likely to pursue a deal with the right-hander this winter.
Philadelphia Phillies
Hoffman is coming off the best two seasons of his career, proving that something about Philadelphia definitely suited him. Last winter, he avoided arbitration by signing a one-year, $2.2 million deal with the Phillies for 2024. Now that he’s entered free agency, could a reunion be in the cards?
On Dec. 6, The Athletic’s Matt Gelb reported that the Phillies “remain in search of a right-handed reliever” this winter, and while they’ve “shopped numerous players on their current roster in an effort to shake up things,” circling back to Hoffman is a very real possibility.
“They remain interested in a reunion with Hoffman, whose agency has marketed him as a potential starter,” Gelb wrote. “Maybe Hoffman secures more money through that route, but he enjoyed his time in Philadelphia and found a lot of satisfaction in a late-inning bullpen role.”
At the Phillies’ end-of-season press conference, Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told reporters that he was focused on securing a reliever this winter, but that only one of Hoffman and Carlos Estévez — who also became a free agent after pitching with the Phillies in 2024 — would be likely to return.
Between Hoffman and Estévez, it’s highly likely the Phillies will favor bringing back Hoffman after the way he’s dominated for them the last two seasons. For his part, Hoffman certainly seems to be open to coming back.
“I want it to be here — I love it here,” Hoffman told On Pattison’s Tim Kelly in September. “The Phillies have been amazing to me, giving me the opportunity that they did, and I kind of took it and ran with it. And I feel like this is my family, all these guys in here … bringing back pretty much the same band that we had last year … making it that much tighter, that much more tight-knit. It feels like home.”
San Diego Padres
Arguably the most interesting option for Hoffman, the San Diego Padres would almost certainly jump at the opportunity to sign the right-hander — but they’d want him in their starting rotation. As mentioned above, Hoffman’s agency has been promoting the idea of him becoming a starter in 2025, even though he hasn’t held a rotation role since 2021, and for the Padres, this could be a so-crazy-it-just-might-work type of move.
With Joe Musgrove out of action for 2025 after undergoing Tommy John surgery on a torn UCL, San Diego is in the market for at least one starter this winter. The top of their rotation is strong, with Dylan Cease, Michael King, and Yu Darvish all returning next year, but without an acquisition, the Padres will likely have to rely on Randy Vasquez and Matt Waldron as their fourth and fifth starters, which is a long way from ideal.
While targeting Hoffman could potentially be risky, this wouldn’t be the first time the Padres took a chance on adding a reliever to their rotation. In 2023, the team transitioned Seth Lugo to starting at the age of 33, and he finished the season with a 3.57 ERA in 26 starts. Just a year later, Lugo — who now pitches for the Kansas City Royals — finished second in AL Cy Young Award voting.
On December 4, reporter Francys Romero posted that the Padres “are in a strong position to land Japanese ace Roki Sasaki” this offseason, who would give the team a solid fourth starter. Still, San Diego will ideally add two pitchers to their rotation for 2025, meaning that even if a deal with Sasaki comes off, Hoffman is still a strong fit, especially if he can transition to starting even close to as well as Lugo did.
Kansas City Royals
The Kansas City Royals should be a top contender to land Hoffman this winter, but it will depend on whether or not general manager J.J. Picollo sees the urgency. In 2024, the Royals’ bullpen ranked 20th in MLB with a 4.13 ERA, and last in strikeouts with just 463, but Picollo still isn’t set on bolstering the relief corps.
“That’s something we’ll let play out in the offseason,” Picollo told reporters at the GM Meetings last month. “We feel very good about our bullpen. Doesn’t mean we won’t do anything, but we feel very good about the depth of our bullpen right now.”
At the 2024 trade deadline, the Royals acquired closer Lucas Erceg in a trade with the Oakland Athletics, and while the addition hugely helped the team’s push the playoffs for the first time since 2015, Erceg’s lack of support from any viable set-up man was obvious. Kansas City is going into next year hoping to follow their comeback season in 2024 with another playoff berth, but it’s hard to imagine the team managing that without making at least one meaningful addition to the bullpen.
Hoffman could easily slot into the set-up role for Erceg to build a strong 1-2 at the back of the Royals’ bullpen. Coming off two seasons with the Phillies, Hoffman has valuable postseason experience, and even though his 2024 playoff record was a long way from stellar, he knows what it takes to go where Kansas City wants to go.
While Picollo hasn’t confirmed his intention to target a free agent reliever, he may just be playing his cards close to the chest. At the end of the day, the match is obvious — the Royals need a high-leverage reliever before Opening Day 2025, and Hoffman is exactly that.
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