TORONTO -- When the Blue Jays’ bullpen door swings open, the unknown enters.

A good bullpen is a boring bullpen, predictable and reliable, but the Blue Jays’ relievers have too often become the story. It’s a group with a 4.80 ERA, good for 28th in baseball, and the Blue Jays don’t just need the usual bullpen tinkering this offseason, they need a complete rebuild.

“It’s not a mystery why we’ve fallen short of expectations,” club president and CEO Mark Shapiro said in August. “The bullpen has been a challenge for us all season long, with significant injuries to three guys we expected to anchor the back end. The backfill just wasn’t there. The bullpen has been an Achilles [heel] for us all year.”

Toronto’s relievers were steady enough in Wednesday’s 4-2 loss to the Phillies, but we saw this play out again in Tuesday’s collapse. Everything that could have gone wrong in that bullpen has gone wrong this season. There’s a long list of other problems, but when we turn around to look back at this season in its entirety, the bullpen woes have been constant.

Jordan Romano and his 6.59 ERA are on the IL, recovering from right elbow arthroscopic surgery. Erik Swanson has a 6.52 ERA and spent a week in Triple-A this summer. Tim Mayza put up an 8.03 ERA and pitches for the Yankees now. Yimi García pitches for the Mariners. Nate Pearson pitches for the Cubs. The band broke up.

Chad Green and Génesis Cabrera stand as this bullpen’s two success stories, but two is not nearly enough. Building a bullpen is a perfect job for the pessimist. Good bullpens are built to weather failure after failure, but the Blue Jays’ bullpen wasn’t. It was built from pine wood, not steel.

This bullpen rebuild will be complicated, and while the Blue Jays could use their wealth of young infielders to swing a trade, it’s going to cost this organization some serious cash over the winter.

What’s your type?

A year ago, it finally felt like the Blue Jays had modernized their bullpen after so many years lagging behind the league. It hasn’t lasted, though. As waiver claims and depth relievers have churned through Toronto, manager John Schneider is looking for the basics. Let’s start small.

“Stuff and how they’re executing it,” Schneider said. “It’s pretty fair to say that we’ve put a lot of different guys in a lot of different spots. To me, it comes down to certain pitches and pitch types, but really how they’re using it and how they’re executing it. It’s pretty simple.”

This is where it becomes clear that depth alone isn’t enough. The Blue Jays need high-end arms like the versions of García and Swanson we saw a year ago.

“When you look at our bullpen at the start of the year, whether it’s health or performance, it hasn’t been what we expected. You need swing-and-miss, for sure,” Schneider said. “You need guys who are in and around the zone. Those are the priorities. You need them all to be healthy at the same time.”

Swing and miss has been a real problem for this bullpen. Entering Wednesday, Blue Jays relievers had a whiff rate of just 23.3%, ranking 28th in baseball ahead of only the Rockies and Royals. They’re getting hammered, too, with the bullpen surrendering a 42.3% hard-hit rate that’s the worst in baseball. These are the numbers that turn wins into losses and sink a team.

This also leaves the Blue Jays with a strikeout rate of just 8.00 per nine innings, 28th in MLB.

Who’s left to build around?

Romano, Green and Cabrera will be back in 2025, the final year of club control for each. From there the Blue Jays will have a decision to make on Swanson, who is entering his third and final arbitration year.

The Blue Jays will have a dozen depth relievers competing for a job, and if the rotation is healthy, there will be room for a depth starter to step in as the long man out of camp. Yariel Rodríguez is going to be an interesting case to monitor, but even if everything goes right, the Blue Jays still need multiple legitimate MLB-caliber relievers this winter.

Let 2024 be a lesson in how foolish it is to even consider the "if everything goes right" scenario. More often than not, it’s about how much goes wrong, and the Blue Jays need to build a bullpen that can weather that storm if ‘25 is going to look any different.