At times, it seems the disappointment of the 2025 season has carried all the way into the final month of the 2026 season for the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Blue Jays have been one of baseball’s biggest disappointments. The defending American League champions’ record dropped to 68-71 with a 6-1 loss to the host Cleveland Guardians on Tuesday night in the opener of a three-game series at Progressive Field.
The Blue Jays suffered a crushing loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 7 of last year’s World Series, falling 5-4 in 11 innings at Rogers Centre in Toronto. The ensuing season has been a slog.
The Blue Jays opened with a three-game sweep of the Athletics but haven’t been three games over .500 since then. Toronto hasn’t had a winning record since it was 4-3 on April 4, and it dipped to 10 games under .500 at 49-59 with a loss to the Washington Nationals on July 28.
Yet with a little less than four weeks left in the season, the Blue Jays still have a chance to defend their AL crown. It won’t be easy, though.
The Blue Jays dropped 2.5 games behind the Guardians in the race for the third and final AL wild card with Tuesday’s loss. Toronto is also one game behind the Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers. The Minnesota Twins are 3.5 games off the Guardians’ pace.
Blue Jays remaining relevant
It is hardly the perfect scenario for the Blue Jays. Yet they will take it considering their season was on the precipice of collapse barely more than a month ago.
“The goal is to be playing in meaningful games in September, regardless of how you get here,” Blue Jays designated hitter George Springer told FanSided following Tuesday’s loss. “Everybody would love to be 15 games up and have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen. But at the end of the day, all you want is a chance, and this team still has one. So, we’ll keep going.”
Springer and his teammates know they would likely be playing out the string in most Septembers with their 68-71 record. However, just six of the 15 AL teams have winning records this year.
“The Blue Jays don’t have a great team this year,” an executive from another AL team said. “They maybe aren’t even a good team. Could I see them back in the World Series this year, though? Absolutely. I don’t ever remember a league being this wide open. They’ve got a legitimate chance.”
While the Blue Jays may have been nursing a World Series hangover for most of this season, many injuries to the starting rotation have hampered them, along with face of the franchise Vladimir Guerrero Jr. having the worst season of his career. Yet Toronto has won 19 of its last 31 games.
Blue Jays have kept the faith
Blue Jays manager John Schneider never lost hope that his team could be in contention in September. His faith is being rewarded, and it is based on last season's results, even when 2025 seemed like 101 years ago.
“You still feel like the excitement of a pennant race, a lot of our guys being raised in a postseason race and kind of fighting to get in, I really believe those experiences stay with you over time,” Schneider said. “We've all been through enough really high-stakes and high emotional situations to where you can put yourself in those situations again and react maybe a little bit slower after going through them before. The moment or situation never seems too big.”
The Blue Jays never lost faith even after trading two key pending free agents, right-hander Kevin Gausman to the Chicago Cubs and center fielder Daulton Varsho to the Houston Astros, at the deadline to ensure they would receive more than the requisite draft pick compensation by keeping those players and then failing to re-sign them.
The Blue Jays also acquired rotation help at the deadline by trading for George Soriano from the Los Angeles Angels and Spencer Arrighetti from the Astros.
“We have so much belief in this team,” Springer said. “We were an eyelash away from being the last team standing last year, and I think guys understand that over the course of 162, there are going to be things that are going to go wrong and there are times when things are going to go right. But the belief in the locker room never fades away.”
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