SAN DIEGO — When the bullpen door at Petco Park swung open on Sept. 6, the sellout crowd was treated to a big surprise. Out jogged Trevor Hoffman wearing his familiar and now retired No. 51 emblazoned on the back of a yellow Savanah Bananas uniform.
The appearance was kept quiet.
“Nobody knew about it,” Hoffman said in an interview on Friday. “That was the amazing thing.”
Hoffman, now 57, got a rare chance to relive his athletic heyday as he headed to mound, the fans wildly cheering to his signature entrance song, AC/DC’s Hells Bells. He had made this approach many times before in his 16 years closing for the San Diego Padres at both Petco and the old Qualcomm/San Diego Stadium, recording 601 saves, 552 with the Padres.
Those are both National League records and across MLB are behind only Mariano Rivera, who recorded all of his 652 saves for the New York Yankees.
Those numbers ushered both men into the National Baseball Hall of Fame—Rivera becoming the only player to receive a unanimous vote from eligible members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and Hoffman getting in on his third time on the ballot.
Hoffman’s recent save is perhaps his final one, this time for the Bananas, but it’s no less a symbolic one for a Padres franchise that has lived and died over the course of decades on great closers and may have its best bullpen ever right now.
“That was pretty cool,” Hoffman said. “Fans 15 years after my retirement, you had an entire generation, who had heard about me pitch from their uncles or parents or grandparents. That might have been the coolest part of it. That group got to see it live.”
Hoffman was brought in that evening with runners on first and second and two outs. He threw three soft pitches, the first two called balls. The third was tapped to second base and turned into a game-ending force out.
“I saw contact, and I lost it,” Hoffman said. “I was lucky I didn’t get hurt. I was just glad I got it and got an out. That it was three pitches, and I was done with it.”
In their ignominious history, the Padres have always had an outstanding closer and bullpen. Win or lose.
Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage and Hoffman, all Hall of Famers. Mark Davis, the 1989 National League Cy Young Award winner. And along the way the likes of Heath Bell, Huston Street, Craig Kimbrel, Kirby Yates and Josh Hader.
But nothing may be comparable to the full array of eight they have right now.
“Our bullpens weren’t this deep,” Hoffman said. “It’d be hard to argue that this bullpen isn’t the best in San Diego history from top to bottom.”
Most of this group can be used in what is termed now as high-level or low-level situations. They can protect a lead or simply to keep a game from getting out of hand. Whatever is needed on any given night. This bullpen should be a key reason why the Padres can go deep in the playoffs this year and perhaps even win the World Series for the first time in club history.
They lead Major League Baseball in saves, ERA, WHIP and lowest batting average by opposing hitters. They are tied with the Los Angeles Angels in wins.
It’s no coincidence that the two times the Padres went to the World Series, Gossage was the closer in 1984 and Hoffman in 1998.
This season Robert Suarez leads the NL in saves and is second in MLB, just behind Carlos Estévez of the Kansas City Royals. Flamethrower Mason Miller is the eighth-inning setup man after coming over from the Athletics in a stunning trade deadline deal along with starter JP Sears.
It would be tempting at this point for Padres manager Mike Shildt to flip them.
“Miller has closed when Suarez isn’t available,” Shildt said. “We’ve used him in the seventh inning to take down the top of the order. It depends on your definition of what a high-level situation is. Suarez has been exceptionally good for us.”
Miller, with his 42.7% strikeout rate and 100-mph four-seam fastball, was the closer for the A’s and is the closer in waiting for the Padres next year if Suarez opts out of his $8 million deal and decides to test free agency. But that’s a story for next year if Miller inherits Hoffman’s legacy.
“We’ll see,” Miller said. “Right now, we’re just worried about this year.”
At Hoffman’s peak, he mixed a 92 mph fastball with his signature changeup. After right shoulder surgery in 2003 his velocity dipped, but he continued to mix the two pitches to baffle hitters. His secret was spotting the ball and throwing strikes. He only walked 307 batters in 18 seasons, a stunning average of 16 walks per season. Consider he appeared in 1,035 games, most of them in the ninth inning.
He always said that when the velocity between his fastball and change became too close, he’d lose his edge.
“The hitters will tell me when it’s time to retire,” he said back then.
They did. He lasted until 2010 when he recorded his final saves for Milwaukee at age 42.
“The art of pitching is just disrupting timing,” Hoffman said. “You learn to throw a batting practice fastball. Back in the day guys had the ability to throttle back. Now guys are 100% on every throw. There’s an art to throwing a pitch and make it look like something different.”
When Miller, who mixes in a deadly slider, blew his first save in 2024, his manager with the A’s Mark Kotsay called Hoffman and asked him to impart some much-needed advice to the young reliever in a story first reported by MLB.com. Kotsay played with the Padres for a time with Hoffman and the two remain close friends.
Still, Hoffman was just a voice on the phone until Miller was traded to San Diego.
“It was super awesome to meet him in person,” Miller said. “There’s no need to talk him up. His name is all over the stadium. You drive in on Trevor Hoffman Way every day. That’s what you call history.”
Miller is just 27 and is tied to the Padres until 2030 when he becomes a free agent. Next year he’s arbitration eligible for the first time and will earn a big raise. Right now, he’s among the best bargains in baseball earning $765,000, $5,000 above the minimum. The Padres’ portion of it is $242,667.
But as much as baseball giveth, it can taketh away.
Reliable setup man Jason Adam was lost for the season recently when he stepped off the mound to field a grounder and tore the quad in his left leg. After surgery, the healing time is about eight months, he said Thursday as he hobbled around the clubhouse on crutches.
Even without him, Adam thinks the current bullpen is right there with comparable ones in Padres history.
“Whew,” he said. “Nobody has put together the career Hoffman put together. Nobody’s won a Cy Young like Mark Davis and never will. That’s historic. At the same time, I can’t think of a bullpen that’s better equipped for success than the one we have.”
The Bananas are certainly watching.
