TORONTO – The Toronto Blue Jays celebrated their history, their remarkable 2025 and unfurled an American League championship banner during a roughly 40-minute prelude to the first pitch of their 50th season. They dimmed the Rogers Centre lights, projected highlights onto the infield, touched the right notes on the videoboard and then had George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. address the crowd and count down the rafters reveal. Ernie Whitt, George Bell, Pat Hentgen, Vernon Wells and Jose Bautista delivered ceremonial first pitches to cap the show, and it was on to the business at hand — building a meaningful new chapter into franchise lore.
Right out the gate, Kevin Gausman set the tone, striking out the side in the first inning, foreshadowing a dominant six-inning outing in which his 11 strikeouts were the most ever by a Blue Jays starter on opening day. Kazuma Okamoto introduced himself with two nice defensive plays in the field, a fifth-inning walk that catalyzed a two-run fifth, a line-drive single to left-centre in the seventh and another base hit to right in the ninth. And after a familiar demon came back to haunt Jeff Hoffman — a home run, the second of the night for Shea Langeliers, that tied the game during a four-strikeout ninth — Andres Gimenez walked off the Athletics with an RBI single in the bottom half, a 3-2 victory triggering bedlam in a sellout crowd of 42,728.
Exactly 146 days after Game 7 of the World Series ended in a 5-4, 11-inning Los Angeles Dodgers victory, the Blue Jays are so back and so much felt all so familiar.
“Absolutely, that’s what we do,” said Ernie Clement, who followed Okamoto’s walk in the fifth and single in the ninth with doubles to push along the game’s pivotal innings. “It’s not always going to be pretty. We have so many different ways to win a baseball game on any given day, I think you saw it. We’re a team. We pick our guys up. We want Hoff off out there, obviously, and, that’s what it’s all about, picking the boys up when (things) don’t go your way.”
That Okamoto started both Blue Jays rallies out of the seven-hole bodes well for the club’s main offensive addition in the off-season. Replacing all of Bo Bichette’s lost production isn’t solely on him, but he has a chance to be a key component of covering that lost ground, which made where manager John Schneider put him in the batting order reflective of how they see his profile.
“There are going to be days where he’s going to be hitting doubles and home runs,” said Schneider. “However it lines up every night… to have that skill set basically of contact and slug between George, Vladimir and (Okamoto) spread out throughout the lineup, I think makes us really tough to beat.”
That proved true after the sting from the top of the ninth, when Hoffman, who also surrendered a game-tying homer in the ninth inning of Game 7, struck out Nick Kurtz on the first ABS challenge by the Blue Jays, called by Kirk, before Langeliers sent a 98.1 m.p.h. heater over the wall in centre.
Hoffman rallied to strike out three more batters in the inning — Tyler Soderstrom reached on a wild pitch –—so his stuff was where it should be, which is why there won’t be much overreaction from the Blue Jays to this blown save.
“Today’s a perfect example of last year is over,” said Schneider. “There are probably so many narratives you can line up, Gimi hits a ball that Varsh hit with the bases loaded, you guys can have a fricking field day with that. It’s how we persevere into this year that’s important. Watching Hoff’s stuff, I thought it was electric. It was a good hitter putting a good swing on 98 at the top of the zone. Totally different from that regard, but I love the fact that he struck out four.”
Gausman featured the good stuff, too, the only hit against him being Langeliers’ first homer of the night, a solo shot in the fourth on a changeup that spun into the catcher’s happy zone.
“I only threw one changeup… so I’ll re-evaluate that pitch,” Gausman quipped.
Otherwise, he was nails, warming up in a dark stadium as the pre-game festivities took place, not even flinching when he was introduced while he threw in the bullpen. He made a point of looking up when the banner dropped, but otherwise, he led the Blue Jays into the charge, playing a key role in getting an emotional night back on the right equilibrium.
“It’s a lot of the same guys and those other guys right now are fitting in and trying to figure out a team dynamic and our culture and whatnot,” said Gausman. “It feels like we were just here, so it was right back to being with the boys and competing and having fun and giving everything you’ve got, just letting the game lay where it lays.”
Just like all last season, that’s what the Blue Jays did.
Okamoto picked up on the way his teammates “grind out at-bats” and said through interpreter Yusuke Oshima that, “sometimes I’ll be aggressive, but I like to show that part of me, as well, I can grind out at-bats. I feel great on this team and just looking forward to contribute.”
Okamoto did that, as did Clement and Gimenez and so many others, and when the game hit a bump, the resilience that was one of their trademarks a year ago showed up again as if it were muscle memory.
“That’s part of the culture, that’s part of what we’ve built in this clubhouse,” said Clement. “We’re as resilient as it gets and when stuff doesn’t go our way, we bounce back better than any team in the league. That’s a common theme.”
Carried over into a new season that’s now going, 1-of-a-whole-new-162 in the books.