“A few of my friends refer to this as the ‘Team of Destiny,’ ” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WATCH | A good time\u00a0to be a Blue Jays fan:\u00a0![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755856447_774_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Excitement builds as Toronto Blue Jays lead in their division following MLB trade deadline<\/p>\n
It’s been an exciting season for the Toronto Blue Jays, who currently lead the AL East division following the MLB trade deadline. CBC’s Tyler Cheese has more on the team’s resurgence.Are they really that good?<\/p>\n
Ahead of Friday’s games, Toronto’s win-loss record stood at 74-54.<\/p>\n
That puts them slightly\u00a0ahead of the\u00a0pace of the Jos\u00e9 Bautista-led Jays squad of 2015, which was at 72-56 through the same number of games<\/a>. The Jays won games at a torrid pace as that season closed<\/a>\u00a0and went on to\u00a0won the division title, though they eventually lost the\u00a0American League Championship Series to the Kansas City Royals, who\u00a0became World Series champs.<\/p>\n Likewise, the Blue Jays were at 70-58<\/a> through 128 games in the 2022 season; and at 67-61 the year before<\/a>. Both of those teams won at least 20 games more than they lost.<\/p>\n Couldn’t there be a collapse?<\/p>\n Don’t talk like that. But try not to think about the 1987 season<\/a>,\u00a0when the soaring Jays squad lost the last seven games of the regular season and missed the playoffs.<\/p>\n WATCH | A rough end for the 1987 Jays:\u00a0 The Jays get eliminated in 1987<\/p>\n The Blue Jays were eliminated from playoff contention on the last day of the season in 1987.What are the\u00a0Jays doing well?<\/p>\n As a team, the Jays have the highest batting average<\/a> in all of Major League Baseball. They also have the highest on-base percentage<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mak says there\u00a0are a\u00a0lot of players \u2014 not just stars\u00a0like Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and\u00a0George Springer \u2014 who are proving to be capable hitters.<\/p>\n “We just know anybody who goes up to that plate can hit a single, or a double, or occasionally, a home run,” said Mak.<\/p>\n Toronto Star baseball columnist\u00a0Mike Wilner\u00a0agrees that this a team with serious depth on its bench.<\/p>\n “It does feel like a lot of the time this is a team that has a different hero every night,” said Wilner, who also hosts the Deep Left Field podcast, noting they’ve\u00a0managed to put together an offence that’s not completely reliant on long balls\u00a0to generate runs.<\/p>\n “They’ve forged this identity of a team that puts the ball in play,” he\u00a0said, noting the team has fewer strikeouts<\/a>\u00a0than any other team in the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n How about the pitching?<\/p>\n A core group of\u00a0veterans anchor\u00a0Toronto’s staring\u00a0rotation, though Mak says these familiar hurlers \u2014\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Berr\u00edos<\/a>, Kevin Gausman<\/a> and Chris Bassitt<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0aren’t having an easy time on the mound.<\/p>\n “None of them are having their best seasons,” she said.\u00a0“But they’re reliable, they’re experienced, they’re smart, they know how to recover from tough spots.”<\/p>\n The Blue Jays currently also have two past\u00a0Cy Young Award winners on\u00a0their pitching\u00a0staff\u00a0\u2014 Max Scherzer\u00a0and Shane Bieber.<\/p>\n Bieber\u00a0will make his season debut on Friday, having recently\u00a0landed in the Toronto organization via a trade-deadline deal<\/a>\u00a0with Cleveland.\u00a0He also hasn’t pitched in the majors since last year as a result of season-ending surgery<\/a>.<\/p>\n WATCH | Blue Jays pick up Cy Young winner Shane Bieber as playoff hopes soar: Blue Jays add Shane Bieber as Toronto relishes playoff push<\/p>\n The Toronto Blue Jays were busy on trade deadline day, adding former Cy Young award winner Shane Bieber as excitement grows in a city hoping for a long playoff run.<\/p>\n At 30, Bieber is younger than Berr\u00edos (31); Gausman (34); Bassitt (36);\u00a0and Scherzer (41). In the world of professional baseball, Wilner says this is a pitching staff that qualifies as “old.”<\/p>\n But overall, he\u00a0says they’ve\u00a0been\u00a0doing “enough to keep them in games and let the offence do the job.”<\/p>\n Mak and Wilner aren’t\u00a0the only Jays observers with\u00a0questions about how the pitching staff may fare<\/a> as the 162-game season \u2014 and eventually the playoffs \u2014 roll on.<\/p>\n How far can they go?<\/p>\n If Toronto can win\u00a0half the\u00a0remaining games, the team\u00a0would end up with at least 90 wins \u2014 a benchmark that, when reached, tends to result in a playoff berth. (Though, as the 91-game-winning\u00a0Blue Jays found out in 2021<\/a>, that’s not always the case.)<\/p>\n Veteran baseball writer Richard Griffin believes\u00a0the Blue Jays have\u00a0a “realistic” chance at making the playoffs, writing on Substack<\/a>\u00a0that a 90-win total is\u00a0“a modest goal” for a team with\u00a0strong camaraderie and the pitching talent needed to keep them competitive.<\/p>\n Wilner says that\u00a0“no matter how good you are” during the regular season, the post-season is unpredictable.<\/p>\n Anything can happen, and that could lead to disappointment for fans who waited too long to start following the action if a potential playoff run\u00a0ends up being short, which is why he says it’s “well past time for people to get on the bandwagon.”<\/p>\n And Jays fans are thirsting for some post-season success, having seen past rosters\u00a0rapidly eliminated from the playoffs in 2020<\/a>,\u00a02022<\/a> and 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n Toronto hasn’t had a deeper playoff run since the Blue Jays made it to the American League Championship Series, first in 2015<\/a> and again a year later<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mak, meanwhile, is keeping the faith. She’s already secured playoff tickets and is ready for a fresh post-season adventure.<\/p>\n “Life is short, the world is challenging,” she said. “Let’s go\u00a0Blue Jays!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blue Jays are leading their\u00a0divisional rivals\u00a0as the baseball season enters its final regular-season stretch, giving the team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-88426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755856448_983_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/blue-jays-pirates-baseball.jpg\")
Blue Jay George Springer watches his two-run home run leave the park during the second inning against the Pittsburgh Pirates Tuesday in Pittsburgh. They Jays went on to win the game 7-3. (Matt Freed\/The Associated Press)<\/p>\n![\"Blue](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/blue-jays-starter-jose-berrios-throws-a-pitch-in-the-rogers-centre.jpg\")
Blue Jays starter Jos\u00e9 Berr\u00edos pitches against the Texas Rangers at the Rogers Centre last Sunday. (Cole Burston\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755856448_201_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/vladimir-guerrero-jr-batting-during-a-game-against-the-pittsburgh-pirates.jpg\")
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. swings at a pitch against the Pittsburgh Pirates Monday. The star player left the game in the fifth inning with hamstring tightness after stretching to secure an out at first base. (Matt Freed\/The Associated Press)<\/p>\n