The Toronto Blue Jays were on the wrong end of a serious beatdown yesterday against the Chicago Cubs. Fresh off a series sweep of the Boston Red Sox, Kevin Gausman struggled through two innings of work in the Windy City before the bullpen and some shaky defence struggled to hold things together, with a final score of 16-2.

Before the game, the Jays made one roster move, recalling left-hander Brendon Little from Triple-A Buffalo while sending Chad Dallas back to the minor leagues. The Jays needed another fresh arm, and a left-hander at that. Adam Macko can’t be recalled yet unless he’s replacing an injured player, and the Jays decided it was time to give Little a shot again in the big leagues.

And it went poorly. Very poorly.

Little entered the game in the bottom of the fifth, with the game already 7-1 for the Cubs. It was a low-pressure situation for the left-hander to get his feet wet back in the Major Leagues. He took over for Tommy Nance, with a runner on first and one out. He immediately walked Pete Crow-Armstrong to put two runners on, but was able to escape the inning unscathed by getting Alex Bregman to line out and Michael Busch to ground out to end the frame.

The left-hander returned for the bottom of the sixth inning and started with another walk and a single to put himself in a tough spot, but he bounced back with a strikeout of former Cubs top prospect Matt Shaw to be a groundball away from a double-play and getting out of the inning. However, another single to Nico Hoerner and a walk to Carson Kelly scored a runner from third base with the bases juiced, and Little’s evening was over. He would earn three more earned runs when Spencer Miles was brought in to clean up the mess.

When the dust settled, it was a gaudy 1.0 IP / 2 H / 4 ER / 3 BB / 1K with 34 pitches thrown and only 19 strikes (55.9%). Little struggled with his command at times, and while not all the earned runs against can be directly pointed at the reliever, considering Miles walked a batter, gave up a single, and a force out to score runners, it was Little’s fault that he left his fellow bullpen arm in a tough spot in the first place.

And it’s the Blue Jays’ fault for putting Little in that scenario entirely.

The truth of the matter is that Little wasn’t ready to return to the big leagues.

Before Little was sent down to the Minor Leagues earlier this season, he was struggling with the walks and opponents were beating up on him with timely hits to plate runners. He was attacking the zone, generating strikeouts, but then he would miss a little too much and would find himself in rough counts or walking batters, and this came back to bite him.

Down in Triple-A, Little made progress in some areas, namely the runs against, but the larger issue remained: he was still walking batters at an insanely high clip.

Across 23.1 innings in Buffalo, Little posted a 2.31 ERA with just six earned runs allowed, but walked 19 batters compared to 32 strikeouts. That’s a 7.3 BB/9 compared to a 12.3 K/9 and a 1.68 K:BB. He was walking batters at an 18.8% clip, and for comparison’s sake, it is 3.5% higher than his 2025 season when fans were starting to lose patience with him in the back half of the campaign.

He owned a 3.92 FIP and a 1.457 WHIP, and that was largely attributed to his high walk rate. Triple-A batters couldn’t put good contact on the ball, mustering a measly .185 average and a 5.8 H/9, but kept finding their way on base if they battled enough and waited. The one caveat is that Little did find more success in June compared to his previous months, allowing just two walks across 4.2 innings of relief with the Bisons before being recalled, but the consistency problem remained.

When he walks one batter, the floodgates open, and then it’s a crooked number on the board for the BB column. The difference between the two levels was that the runs never crossed home plate, and Little never felt the damage associated with the free passes. In the big leagues, this has come back to bite him, and Jays fans witnessed that yesterday.

Overall, there is an onus on the player to get things sorted out when everything isn’t trending in the right direction. But there is also an onus on the club to put a player in the right position to succeed and improve when they are struggling on the diamond. When Little is firing on all cylinders, he is a tough left-hander to face out of the bullpen with his fastball and sweeping curve options, and fans witnessed that to begin the 2025 season. However, he’s clearly still battling through something on the mound, whether it’s mechanical, mental, fatigue, etc., and that’s not doing him any favours at the moment.

The Blue Jays did a disservice to Little by calling him up when, ultimately, the root cause of the problem had not been solved in the minor leagues, and it reared its ugly head against the Cubs yesterday.

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