Toronto Blue Jays closer Louis Varland was named the American League Reliever of the Year on Wednesday, November 11, topping Cleveland Guardians closer Cade Smith and Tampa Bay Rays closer Bryan Baker in the voting. Sportsnet reported Varland’s win on Wednesday night, and MLB announced the award on its official Facebook page the same evening. The voting was conducted by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America before the post-season began, and 2026 is the first year the BBWAA has handed out the award, which makes Varland its first American League winner and the first winner in Blue Jays history.
Louis Varland AL Reliever of the Year, By The Numbers
The case was built on run prevention more than raw save totals. Varland, 28, finished the 2026 season with a 1.27 ERA and 97 strikeouts across 78 innings, with a 1.00 WHIP and 35 saves in 37 opportunities. Baker and Smith each saved 41 games, six more than Varland, but neither matched his earned run average: Baker posted a 1.44 ERA in 62 and a third innings, and Smith, the Canadian right-hander from Abbotsford, British Columbia, posted a 1.95 ERA in 74 innings with 107 strikeouts. Varland topped all qualified American League relievers in ERA and in fWAR, at 3.1, and finished in the top five in strikeouts, saves, win probability added and home runs allowed per nine innings.
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The finish matched the start. Varland’s 71st and final outing of the season came on September 25 against the Cincinnati Reds, when his last pitch was a 100 mph fastball in the upper third of the strike zone to strike out Sal Stewart and close a 6-5 Toronto win. It was his 35th save, and it capped a year in which he blew only two saves in total. In July he was named to the American League All-Star team, his first selection, and threw a scoreless eighth inning with one strikeout in the American League’s 4-0 victory.
A Closer Toronto Did Not Plan On
Varland was not Toronto’s closer when the season opened, and he had never saved a game in the major leagues before 2026. He entered the year with a career earned run average of 4.66, working in a set-up role while Jeff Hoffman held the ninth inning. When Hoffman’s inconsistency cost him the job, Varland took over in late April, and his first career save, on April 21 against the Los Angeles Angels, set the tone for everything after it: he entered in the ninth with one out and the bases loaded, and ended the 4-2 win on his first and only pitch, a game-ending double play.
From that night, Varland strung together 41 consecutive relief appearances without wasting a single save opportunity. Between April 21 and August 5 he saved 24 games with a 1.39 ERA, 55 strikeouts and just one home run allowed against 180 batters faced. He was voted the American League Reliever of the Month for March and April, the first Toronto reliever to win that monthly honour since Jordan Romano in 2022, and the Blue Jays marked it on social media in terms that became the bullpen’s running joke all summer: “ABSOLUTE DAWG. Louis Varland is your American League Reliever of the Month!” In October, the Sporting News named him a reliever on its 2026 American League All-Star team, voted on by players, coaches and executives, making him the first Blue Jays pitcher selected to that team since Roy Halladay in 2003.
The Trade That Keeps Paying Off
Toronto acquired the six-foot-one right-hander from the Minnesota Twins at the 2025 trade deadline, in the deal that sent outfielder Alan Roden and pitching prospect Kendry Rojas to Minnesota. The return showed itself almost immediately: in the 2025 post-season, Varland appeared in 15 games in relief, setting the major league record for the most appearances by a pitcher in a single post-season, as the Blue Jays rode their bullpen through October. A deadline addition brought in for depth had become, within fifteen months, the most decorated reliever in the American League.
The award also gives Toronto a clean sweep of the night’s pitching story on the Canadian side of the ballot. Blue Jays starter Dylan Cease finished second in the American League Cy Young voting on the same Wednesday night, behind unanimous winner Cam Schlittler of the New York Yankees, so the two finalist spots Toronto carried into awards week both landed: a runner-up finish for the rotation’s ace and a first-place finish for the closer nobody in the organization had pencilled into the ninth inning when spring training opened. For a Blue Jays season that fell short as a team, the pitching staff’s two headline arms have now been formally recognised as the league’s best at the two ends of a game, and Varland’s name sits first on a brand new line of the BBWAA record book, as the inaugural American League Reliever of the Year.
