Prime Minister Mark Carney says “you’ve got to believe” the Toronto Blue Jays can still make the playoffs. But can they, really?
The Jays have played some scrappy baseball lately, as the team finds itself on the fringes of playoff contention with a quarter of the season to go and it’s still possible they might find a way to the post-season in the anemic American League.
Toronto beat the Boston Red Sox tonight, in a 5-3 victory that improved their season record to 58-63 and kept the team in the hunt for a potential playoff spot.
“At this point, you just kind of throw everything other than winning out the window and show up every day and try to win,” Jays infielder and all-star Ernie Clement told CBC News, earlier Tuesday.
There are a half-dozen teams, including Toronto, that are within four games of the last wild-card spot in the wider American League — and the Blue Jays would have to leap past all of them to secure a return to the post-season.
Here’s a look at why the Jays are where they are with just over 40 games to go, and what they have to do to get back to the post-season.
From the World Series to last place?
That’s the reality: Toronto has gone from a team that competed for a World Series title last fall to a team curently sitting in last place in the American Leage East.
They can’t win the division at this point, so that means they’ll have to claim a wild-card spot to reach the post-season.
Less than a year after competing for the MLB championship, the Toronto Blue Jays made some big trades ahead of the deadline, including fan favourites Daulton Varsho and pitcher Kevin Gausman.
The win over Boston Tuesday night improved Toronto’s season record to 58-63 — 12 fewer wins than they had at the same point last year.
At present, the Tampa Bay Rays lead the AL East, followed by the New York Yankees in second place, and the resurgent Boston Red Sox — who put together lengthy win streaks in July and August — in third.
The Baltimore Orioles (with a 58-62 record) and the Jays sit in fourth and fifth place.
Just 2 teams have done it
According to Elias Sports Bureau, the official statistician of Major League Baseball (MLB), there are just two teams that have stood at 58-63 through 121 games — the same record the Jays have right now — that went on to make the playoffs in the wild-card era: The 2024 Detroit Tigers and the 2009 Minnesota Twins.
Randy Robles of Elias Sports Bureau believes “there’s some hope” for the Jays, noting that if there ever was a year for a struggling team to still have a chance, it would be this one, when so many American League teams have been playing so poorly.
What it will take
Toronto has begun to claw its way to a better record, claiming series wins against the Washington Nationals, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies in the past couple of weeks.
That winning trend has to continue for the team to have a shot at the post-season: “They gotta get to .500,” Robles told CBC News, referring to the point when a team has won as many games as it has lost.
The Texas Rangers, the team currently sitting in the third wild-card spot the Jays are vying for, was only one game above the .500 mark prior to Tuesday’s matchups.
All the teams seeking to take the Rangers’ spot — Toronto included — currently have losing records.
Summing up the challenge the Blue Jays face in climbing the standings, Toronto Star baseball columnist Mike Wilner saw a certain parity in the teams involved in the wild-card fight.
“Every team in front of the Blue Jays kind of stinks,” Wilner told CBC News. “The problem is, the Blue Jays kind of stink, too.”
Cease leads the rotation
The Jays are thin on starting pitching right now, but the rotation includes pitching ace Dylan Cease, the newly acquired José Soriano, Shane Bieber, as well as veteran Max Scherzer.
Cease is on the hunt for a Cy Young Award, and has been in the midst of a sizzling run this summer that included bid for a no-hitter in July that he carried into the ninth inning. He started Tuesday’s game against Boston, going five innings and striking out seven.
Soriano was solid in his recent Blue Jays debut. Bieber, who missed most of the first half of the season, has been battling for consistency since rejoining the team in June.
Scherzer has had two decent starts for Toronto this month — and the team will be counting on him to deliver more if they have a shot at a wild card.
“We have a job to do: Every time we come to the park, we’ve got to win,” Scherzer told CBC News.
In the bullpen, the Jays will continue to look to closer Louis Varland and workhorse reliever Tyler Rogers in high-leverage situations.
Rookie pitcher Spencer Miles, as well as relievers Braydon Fisher and Mason Fluharty will also be key to any push for the post-season.
What about the bats?
Hitting has been a real problem for the Blue Jays this year. The team sits near the bottom of the major leagues in terms of home runs, runs scored and on-base percentage.
Only two Blue Jays have a double-digit home run total: Kazuma Okamoto (24) and Springer (12).
Last year, Toronto had four players who swatted 20-plus homers. This year, they’ll be fortunate to have two.
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