If you’ve followed the Toronto Blue Jays for long enough, you can remember these round-number anniversaries. There’s a commemorative patch on the sleeve, some fun events that encourage fans to remember beloved alumni and, for a moment, the past becomes more celebrated than the present.

But the club’s 50th season doesn’t quite feel like that kind of commemoration. It feels less like a look backward than a marker on the timeline of something still unfolding.

The obvious physical symbol of that shift is the ballpark itself. The renovation of the Rogers Centre transformed what had increasingly been something of a concrete monument to past glories into a legacy of how stadia used to look and operate.

But ask any fan who has entered the Rogers Centre over the past three seasons, and under that familiar roof and icon of the Toronto skyline is a ballpark that finally feels modern. Sightlines opened. Social spaces appeared. It’s a renovation that recognized that, beyond the annual roster churn, the franchise needed to fundamentally update the experience of watching the team itself.

You could argue the process started even earlier, at the club’s player-development complex in Florida. It was an investment that was, at the time, met with skepticism, especially given the state of the roster when shovels first turned sod on that project. But the upgrades to the PDC (and to TD Ballpark in Dunedin) weren’t merely cosmetic. These are the kind of infrastructural investment teams make when they’re thinking seriously about the next decade, not just the next season.

The construction of the PDC didn’t come with a pennant to hang in Toronto, but it was a sign of the cultural change within the franchise. And while the newest pennant to be unveiled at the home opener may not be directly attributable to the infrastructure, it’s part of this new chapter.

For all the statistical analysis that informs our understanding, baseball fandom is still significantly about vibes. Last year’s success — and let’s not be afraid to call it that — shifted the broad perspective about the Blue Jays, from the casuals to the die-hards.

It was momentum.

For much of the previous two decades, the Blue Jays often seemed like a franchise reacting to the league rather than shaping its own destiny. They would assemble promising rosters, flirt with contention, and then watch as the gravitational pull of larger payrolls and deeper organizations dragged the standings back into a familiar alignment. It produced some very good teams, a few memorable ones, and an undercurrent of frustration that the club was always that close, yet so far, to fully realizing its potential.

What feels different now is the posture. The Blue Jays increasingly behave like an organization that believes the future is something you build rather than something you wait for.

That mindset shows up now in aggressive free-agent pursuits, and the willingness to shape the roster rather than merely maintain it. The team isn’t hoping the competitive cycle breaks in its favour. It’s trying to bend the cycle.

It means taking bold steps like locking down a charismatic and productive player like Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for the foreseeable future, and making this franchise his, rather than hoping to have him replaced in the aggregate.

There’s something fitting about all this coming to fruition in the 50th season of the franchise’s existence. Milestone seasons are supposed to remind you where you’ve been. But the best ones also tell you where you’re going.

For the Blue Jays, the 50th season arrives at a moment when the franchise has stopped treating its past as the high-water mark. The past glories of the franchise will always be part of the club’s lore, but marking this time is more meaningful as the team seems set to arrive just before something new.

That’s the undercurrent of this 50th season of Blue Jays baseball. It hits differently because they’re acting like a franchise that wants the coming decade to matter as much or more than the ones that came before.

This year isn’t just about celebrating history. It’s about making history.

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As the Toronto Blue Jays‘ 2025 season has extended progressively beyond expectations, it brings up feelings that for some haven’t been felt in decades. For many others, it is their first opportunity to live at these dizzying heights.

Where the 1992 and 1993 World Series teams came out of several years of perpetual contention (and perpetual heartbreak), this season’s expectations were set so much more modestly. Just hang in there, remain in contention and maybe get into the post-season. Maybe win a playoff game. Maybe win the wild-card round and make it to the Division Series.

The difference between those more modest goals and where the Blue Jays find themselves now is a difference of seven wins over 11 games in two weeks. But the elevation of every feeling along the way – joy, anxiety, anticipation, nausea – is vastly beyond what you could have anticipated.

As many Jays fans have said to one another, this is unbelievable.

In fact, part of the struggle now is to try to grasp on to every moment and every emotion that we’re having and try to retain it, knowing that one day we’ll look back on this implausible season and this incredible post-season run, and wish that we could recall every detail of what was happening and how we were feeling. 

The other odd feeling for the most diehard of Blue Jays fans is attempting to share the moment with so many others. Now that this team is at the centre of the cultural moment in Canada (and the rest of the baseball world), those who obsess over the team year after year are suddenly faced with friends and family and colleagues who are genuinely interested in our passionate fixation.

You’ll get a question, like: “So you must be pretty happy that Blue Jays won, huh?” And it’s difficult to answer, both because you know that “happy” doesn’t nearly cover the range of emotions you are feeling in that moment. But also, it’s hard to explain in polite company how you howled “Let’s go!” so hard from the 500 level that your jaw hurt for days afterwards, and that your ears were still ringing from the sound reverberating inside the dome. Or that you might have wept when you saw Vladdy tear up after game 7, and that you’ve spent much of the last three weeks ping-ponging between guarded enthusiasm and dread.

You certainly don’t want to let anyone know that you refused to wear any green or teal or yellow or silver during the series against the Mariners, or that you may have forgone a Starbucks coffee, given its Seattle origins. Or that you worried that you wore the wrong Blue Jays ballcap on game night, and maybe that’s why they lost a game earlier in the series.

In many ways, it’s hard to let those who aren’t hardcore Jays fans or baseball fans into the moment you are having, because to explain the meaning of it all would be nearly impossible. But on a more positive note, this is a moment where fans can deepen their bonds with their fellow travellers, who have been on this journey with them. It’s not that others aren’t welcome to enjoy the Blue Jays, but there is a depth of knowledge and feeling that has been built up amongst fans that allows them to understand instinctively the deeper meaning of a Myles Straw base hit, or why it simply HAD to be a George Springer home run that put them in the World Series.

Beyond the disbelief, and beyond the irrationality, there’s another word for these feelings: Awe. It’s that feeling of ecstasy and agony of living in a moment that is bigger than the moment. It’s the sense that what you are experiencing personally is part of something much bigger, and part of the history that will tie us together decades from now.

It’s also a time for hope. So much of the discourse around sport is cynical and negative, with a focus on all that went wrong. But as we approach the conclusion of the season where so much has gone right, it’s that much easier to let yourself feel confidently optimistic.

For the first time in more than three decades, the World Series isn’t a memory for Jays fans. It’s the moment. Enjoy it.

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A surprise, because few observers regarded the Blue Jays as a serious contender, much less as the team who would end up with best record in the American League. 

National baseball pundits at best saw the Blue Jays as a fringe wild-card team, or more likely the fourth- or fifth-place team in the American League East. Even local baseball scribes and analysts were strained to piece together everything that would need to line up just right for the Jays to exceed expectations, or to peak over the .500 mark. 

This opinion wasn’t completely disrespectful. Last year’s team was a dreary mess, and there were few reasons for immediate optimism. Much of the pre-season “ifs” that could potentially lead to success required a lot of Blue Jays to play well above the level they did last year. Bo Bichette, Alejandro Kirk and George Springer were all coming off the worst seasons of their careers, and the questions around that trio coming into this season were whether if their steep one-year declines were simultaneous anomalies, or were they part of a trend that could be expected to continue. 

Of those three, Springer was the one who seemed least likely to return to former glories. It wasn’t so far beyond the pale when a local member of the media foresaw his role as “fourth outfielder, at best.”

Add on to this the fact that the Jays were snookered again by the Los Angeles Dodgers in their pursuit of free agent Roki Sasaki, they were left with Myles Straw and a bag of extra international free agent money, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s performance was as uncertain as his future with the team. Even the most optimistic fans would have struggled to explain the path to playoffs, much less the pennant. 

By May 7, after a blown save led to a walk-off loss to the Angels, the Jays were four games under .500, with a minus-40 run differential. (Oh, how we had fun with run differential this year.)

But from there, the Jays would win their next four games, get back to .500 and though they hung around that mark for another week or so, they would go 74-48 the rest of the way, on their way to the division crown, and all the fun Jays fans are having now. 

Bichette, Kirk and especially Springer all contributed well above expectations, while Guerrero at various times in the season played like the star player and face of the franchise who deserved the monumental contract he received early in the season, reaffirming the Rogers Centre, Toronto and Canada as his home.  

As to the pleasantness of it all, this 2025 edition of the Jays has been one of the most fun and genuinely likeable squads in franchise history. This season wasn’t just about rooting for the stars, but finding a new hero every day, up and down throughout the roster.  

It’s always a dubious proposition to suppose that we really know the players on the field, and what’s on their mind and in their hearts. But from what fans could see at the ballpark and through their screens, this year’s collection of guys seemed fun and amiable, and there were no visible eruptions between teammates. If there were cliques in the clubhouse, they didn’t seem obvious from the outside. Maybe it helps when your biggest stars are generally happy dudes who smile more than they scowl. 

Moreover, you’d be hard-pressed to think of a single contributor who dogged it this year. Without descending into the indulgence of eye-wash hustle, this year’s Jays seemed to always give it their all and took little for granted. They led the league in comeback wins, and from midway through the season, never seemed out of any game. Five-run deficit in the first inning? You’d better stick around for the comeback, as the Jays’ bullpen hung on and the offence grinded out the other team’s bullpen.

Sure, there were a few blowouts, but when manager John Schneider encouraged everyone to move on and focus on tomorrow, it was far less of an imposition than in the previous year. 

Of course, all these great vibes are only what got the Blue Jays to this point. Like any great and enjoyable narrative, the final assessment of the season can only be judged by the final chapters. 

With the last weeks of the season effectively taking on a playoff atmosphere, as the Jays battled to win their last four games to hold off the New York Yankees for the division, fans have had a small taste of what lies ahead in the post-season. The last week was one must-win after another, until the very end. 

From here, the tension only rises. The beautiful agony of the playoffs means that beyond every game being meaningful, every at-bat and every pitch takes on additional weight. 

The divisional champion banners in centre field at Rogers Centre are white, and we know that one will go up before next season. The World Series banners are blue. 

Despite how gratifying and uplifting the Blue Jays season has been, there’s little indication that either the team or their fans will be satisfied in the coming rounds of the playoffs with anything less than another blue banner, and a perfectly memorable ending to the story.

For some, the model of a baseball legend is personified by Derek Jeter, or Cal Ripken Jr., or Johnny Bench, or Mickey Mantle. These are fabled ballplayers, at least in part because they spent the entirety of their career with one team. 

Indeed, on the margins of some Hall of Fame candidacy discussions, the idea that a player wore only one uniform somehow strengthens his case for Cooperstown. Perhaps this is because in an era when all athletes are commodified, and any player can be traded or leave in free agency, the franchise legend is increasingly a bit of nostalgia bait for a sport that craves those feelings.

Realistically, even the greatest players now will play for several teams over the course of their career. And some of the most exceptional of all time will find themselves as legendary journeymen towards the end. 

With Max Scherzer about to scale the mound again in a Blue Jays uniform, fans of this franchise will get the opportunity to appreciate their brief moment with one of the best to ever toe the rubber. After a three-inning outing in March that felt like something of a mirage — did that really happen? — getting the chance to appreciate this sort of mythological figure in baseball history up close can be a gift. 

For whatever notion some might have that it is nobler and more dignified for baseball greats to bow out before their tank runs dry, there is something special for fans about these opportunities to appreciate the best who have ever played the game. 

Years from now, when Jays fans see “TORONTO, A.L., 2025” written beneath Scherzer’s name on his Hall of Fame plaque, it will bring them back to that time when he (hopefully) contributed to a meaningful summer — just as fans of the Dodgers, Rangers and Mets will appreciate the brief time that he spent with them. 

It’s possible there was some other fourth starter on the market in the winter who could have contributed more to the Blue Jays as measured by WAR, but would we really remember them nearly as well? You may well have to look it up to confirm if Steven Matz was ever a Blue Jay, but fans of a certain vintage will never forget that Hall of Famer Phil Niekro once pitched three games for the Jays down the stretch in 1987. It’s right there on his plaque, if you need proof.

Indeed, sometimes those late-career appearances can feel like nothing more than a drive-by. This year’s Hall of Fame inductee, Dave Parker, is mostly remembered as a Pittsburgh Pirate and maybe a Cincinnati Red. But towards the end of his career, he made meaningful contributions to the Oakland Athletics and Milwaukee Brewers before ending his playing days with 13 games as the Blue Jays’ DH, helping to get them over the hump and back into the playoffs. 

There’s a legendary picture of the Jays doffing their caps to the crowd on the last day of the 1991 season in recognition that the attendance figures broke 4 million for the first time at SkyDome. Front and centre in that picture is Dave Parker, with his No. 39 in the classic split-font numerals on the back of his jersey.

At other times, those contributions can be more meaningful. Dave Winfield spent only one season as a Blue Jay, as part of a late-career journey that also included stops in California, Minnesota and Cleveland. But that one season left such an indelible mark on the franchise’s history that Blue Jays fans know deep in their soul the meaning of the words “Winfield wants noise.” And they remember that double just inside the third base bag in the 1992 World Series that certainly ranks within the most consequential hits in the team’s history. 

Hearing Winfield go out of his way in his Hall of Fame speech to single out his time and the fans in Toronto is the sort of thing that keeps baseball fans’ spirits afloat when the seasons are long, and the results aren’t always there. 

Baseball can have an inclination towards snobbery, but we should celebrate those moments of remembering Ichiro Suzuki in a Marlins jersey, or Ken Griffey Jr. as a White Sox, or Greg Maddux with the Padres, or Fred McGriff with the Dodgers, or Lee Smith with the Expos. Or even Justin Verlander with the Giants this year. Those moments help to keep baseball interesting.

We shall soon see what sort of contribution Max Scherzer makes to the Blue Jays this season, and just how historically consequential this time in his career is for him, and for the fans. But baseball fandom is best when you can situate yourself within something memorable amongst so many fleeting moments. 

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For Toronto Blue Jays fans entering the 2025 season, though, hope is decidedly more measured, and the optimism is muted on the cusp of Opening Day.

Sure, the return of baseball is enough to put some extra spring in your step. On some level, you’re happy just to know that real games and warmer, longer days are almost here. And you can talk yourself into believing that this year’s team is set up for more than 90 wins and post-season baseball. You can imagine that the roster tweaks and positive progression and a breakout here or there could turn this into a summer to remember.

And yet, there’s sufficient reason at the outset of the schedule for Blue Jays fans to keep aspirations in check. It’s not exactly cynicism, although that’s always out there. It’s more a matter that fans are keeping their enthusiasm in reserve for the moment.

Some of that is attributable to a deeply disappointing 2024 season. Given the anticipated trajectory of the franchise in recent years, to have an unexpected step backward and a deadline sell-off is enough to make a fan question the direction of the team, and wonder whether the best of times have passed for this iteration of Blue Jays.

A big off-season may have helped to salve those wounds from last season, but although the Jays dabbled at the top of the free-agent market again, there were no historic signings to spark uninhibited fervour. The hot stove brought fans a mostly satisfactory, basically competent set of signings and acquisitions.

More than anything, there’s the realization that the team has seemingly, possibly, reached the end of the Vlad and Bo era. After six seasons together on the big-league roster, and several more in their ascendancy as top prospects, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette are potentially entering their last seasons in Toronto, leaving significant questions looming for what comes next.

Their impending free agency poses the uncomfortable question: Is this the end of this competitive window? And if so, then what’s next?

There’s still six months and a whole season ahead, and perhaps some faith that at least one player or the other could be re-signed at some point. But if we are still thinking in terms of windows, the presence of those two second-generation all-stars on the roster served as an important signifier of the Blue Jays’ legitimacy as possible contenders. Their talent was an opportunity, and the opportunity has nearly passed.

The Blue Jays front office has stated for years that their goal is to remain perpetually competitive, with one window opening into the next. But, to torture the metaphor, one can’t be blamed for having trepidation that the step out of one window and into the next might involve a precipitous drop.

And one can’t help but acknowledge the general state of the world around us when it comes to the effort involved in mustering up positive feelings these days.

Those are the sort of ponderous notions that come to weigh down the spirits after a long winter. And yet, at least when it comes to baseball, there are some small blooms of belief if you look closely enough.

Despite the general consensus about the poor state of the Blue Jays’ minor-league system, 2025 marks the first season in several years that there were legitimate battles for roster spots that resulted in hard decisions between good young players. Addison Barger, Steward Berroa and Alan Roden spent the last several weeks crushing baseballs and generally looking like ballplayers. Roden has come north with the Blue Jays, despite being a long shot at the outset of spring training to make the team, but Barger also seems primed to take a step forward in the coming months.

On the mound, Trey Yesavage appeared as part of the Spring Breakout games in Florida this month, and despite his youth — he’s still just 21 years old — he looked fully grown, imposing and impressive in his brief appearance.

On the other side of time’s ledger, there is future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer, whose presence in a Blue Jays uniform near the end of his career is at least a curiosity for fans. How much of his legendary intensity and quality he can bring to bear on the upcoming season is an open, if compelling, question.

Notably, Scherzer will turn 41 on July 27, and Yesavage will turn 22 on July 28. If one represents the glories of the past and the other the potential for the future, the burning questions for the next few months will be where the Blue Jays find themselves on July 31, at the MLB trade deadline. 

As the mantra goes, it’s a long season. But in this highly consequential moment for the Blue Jays, the coming weeks will be that much more meaningful in understanding if this is the end of one era, an extension of the current era (pardon the pun), or a turn toward something new, and perhaps further in the distance.

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Such is the case with the Toronto Blue Jays’ brain trust of CEO Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins, who are about to enter their 10th season at the helm of the team.

Despite their season-end self-assessments that singled out their modest successes, they entered this offseason in something close to a no-win situation with the fans of the franchise.

To appraise the front office on their own valuations, they have managed to field a team that has made the playoffs in three of the five seasons in this decade so far, and there’s a good argument that the nomadic 2021 squad that missed the playoffs on the last day of the season despite calling three different cities home was the best team fielded during their tenure.

On the other hand, the Blue Jays have not won a playoff game since 2016, with a team that was largely assembled by the previous regime.

Baseball is, as R.A. Dickey might say, a capricious game. Bad luck, poor health and confounding performance all begin to add up, and in the retrospective assessment, those failures seem that much more concentrated.

This may be most evident with the front office’s roster building. Despite playing near the top of the free agent market in recent off-seasons and landing some prime veteran talent, there’s nothing that resonates so deeply as the unsuccessful pursuit of Shohei Ohtani last year. That the team on the field followed this off-field defeat with a season of backsliding and regression only served to erode what slim deposits of fan optimism remained.

If Shapiro and Atkins entered the off-season in something close to a no-win situation, the ostentatious contract awarded to Juan Soto by the New York Mets only served to deepen their troubles. Not only did the Blue Jays come up short with a prominent free agent – again – but the terms of Soto’s deal are so inflationary that this group of executives fixated on their own rational valuations of players’ value must feel disoriented and adrift.

Layer onto this discombobulation the fact that many or most Blue Jays fans entered the signing season with the following bumper sticker as their mantra: “If not Soto, re-sign Vlad.”

Soto’s deal blew far past even the most outlandish expectations, leaving Ohtani’s record-breaking deal from just last year in the dust by hundreds of millions of dollars in actual value. In this context, the Jays are left with two options when it comes to securing the long-term services of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: Bid themselves upwards in a historically hot market,

or let him reach free agency and hope that the salary proposals come back down to earth next year.

Outside of an extension for Guerrero, it’s hard to imagine what collection of off-season moves it would take to reinvigorate the faith of an understandably weary group of fans. Corbin Burnes is an exceptional pitcher, but even his signing would leave open the questions: “What else? What next?”

The muted response to the recent acquisition of Platinum Glove infielder Andrés Giménez offers some sense of the gulf between the expectations of fans and the ambitions of the front office. Giménez is a young, gifted defender with exceptional baserunning skills, and accumulates wins on paper in underappreciated ways that aren’t evident in the numbers that show up under his image on TV.

Giménez is a nice player, but his acquisition is something of a head-scratcher at the current moment, when the team’s competitive window may be about to slam shut once again. One couldn’t be blamed for wondering if the front office is less interested in winning championships than they are in hanging banners in the Rogers Centre outfield for being The Most Clever Boys in Baseball, or The Most Prudent Stewards of Payroll.

Winning in baseball is no simple thing. It takes a confluence of great scouting, drafting, and player development. Add in the right coaching and support, acquiring the right free agents, and having all this fit perfectly and succeed collectively, and maybe it all comes together gloriously in the crisp fall air.

Over a decade, the executive team led by Shapiro and Atkins have had ample opportunity to lineup up as many of those factors as possible. It has yet to work, and it seems to be headed in the wrong direction.

In a game defined by failure, this Blue Jays front office has little room remaining for error in the coming weeks.

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Going back to the time when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was signed and Bo Bichette was drafted, one could have looked ahead to 2024 as the season when everything should have come together. The two young and promising players could have been projected to reach their peak, and the team would have had the opportunity to build sufficiently around them.

This could have been – should have been – the Blue Jays’ best opportunity in this competitive window. It should have been the year that the Jays were pushing for the AL East title, and that key veteran additions would join with high-end prospects to make them more than just a contender. This could have been the apex. That was the dream.

The reality has been so painfully different. This season has been a calamity of underperformance and injuries that brings us to a point where even the most ardently optimistic fans have given up hope on this season. It started slowly and poorly for almost everyone on the roster, but as recently as June 16, the Jays were a game under .500 and just a modest winning streak away from being right back in the mix.

Instead of a winning streak, the Jays promptly lost seven games in a row and the season’s highest aspirations were essentially quashed within the week. They’ve gone 9-16 since that modest high point of the season, losing games in the standings and most of their high-leverage relief corps at the same time. 

So we’ve come to the end of the road. And the fans have let go.

The level of resignation is such that the discussion is not whether the Blue Jays should be sellers at the forthcoming trade deadline, but just how deep the sell-off should go.

If the fact of a deadline sell-off has reached to the point of general acceptance, perhaps the more pertinent question is whether if those who oversaw the team’s direction in this competitive window should get the opportunity to be able to make such foundational decisions on when and how the next competitive window should open.

It’s hardly shocking that a significant portion of fans in a down year are ready to see everybody and just about anybody walk the plank for their part in all this mess. Even the sainted former GM Alex Anthopoulous and the revered former manager John Gibbons spent most of their tenures being run out of town.   

A distinction between those fine gentlemen and the individuals involved in making the critical decisions now is the difference between expectations and outcomes. While Anthopoulos and Gibbons benefited to some degree from the modest expectations of a fanbase that had spent nearly two decades meandering in middling results, the current front office has brought the team to the precipice of success, only to fall short. It comes across as either comic or tragic.

This was the season to get over the top, not fall off the cliff.

Seattle GM Jerry Dipoto was pilloried this past off-season for stating that the goal of a franchise should be to win 54 per cent of its games over the course of a decade. Though Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro and GM Ross Atkins have never made such a statement publicly, their cautious, risk-averse, process-driven approach seems to embody the notion.

What fans want, on the other hand, is not just the sustainable long-term competence, but the peak moments that will draw them back in fallow moments such as this. Flags fly forever, and in a time of abundant cynicism, the concept of selling hope just isn’t what it used to be. The measure of risk and the internal processes need to adjust for that fact.

So where do the Blue Jays go from here? Clearly, their impending free agents are likely to be dealt, assuming they can all return from the injured list in time.

What the team decides to do with homegrown starting catcher and impending free agent Danny Jansen may well be a bellwether for the forthcoming direction of the team. Should he be moved at this deadline, given his importance to the team, it would seem to suggest that the Jays are more inclined to rebuild than retool.

Which brings us back to the beginning, and the aspirations fans had for a team led by Vlad and Bo. They belong to us, we belong to them.

All indications are that the Jays’ off-field leadership is inclined to hold on to them through this season, despite whatever interest there may be on the market. What ultimately becomes of these two players will be truly decisive as to the legacy of this closing window, and the outlook for the future. This reaches the deepest level of hearts-and-minds fandom, and the inevitable decisions that must be made on them will define this front office.

But how likely is it that the answers to those questions are answered by this deadline? And who will answer for them?

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It’s a peculiar situation from the outside looking in, though for Blue Jays fans who have lived through the team’s most recent competitive window, such a circumstance is well-earned.

Blue Jays fans are well aware that they are approaching the later stages of this competitive window, and for all of the promise that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette brought with them, the team’s results have ultimately been disappointing, punctuated by soul-punishing conclusions to almost every season in their careers so far.

Add in that the most dramatic moment for fans in recent memory was an ill-fated plane ride that did not bring the game’s most coveted free agent to Toronto, and one can understand how even your most measured Blue Jays supporter is more than a little irritable and twitchy these days.

They say hope springs eternal at this point of the baseball season, but given the wariness that trends toward cynicism, there’s not much margin for error for this year’s Blue Jays. If the series of recent failures would make any fan leery, the punishingly frustrating 2023 season has left many fans feeling contemptuous of the team.

Moreover, an off-season that was a letdown for the futile pursuit of Shohei Ohtani and generally underwhelming otherwise has left some fans wondering whether the front office feels the same level of disappointment at the past results, or the same urgency to compete.

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The Toronto Blue Jays are officially back as they begin the season with Jose Berrios on the mound against the Tampa Bay Rays. Watch Opening Day, beginning with a special edition of Blue Jays Central, beginning at 3 p.m. ET / noon PT on Thursday, March 28, on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+.

Broadcast schedule

Even with the benefit of inherent enthusiasm for a new year, this prologue of past calamities will weigh heavily on the current season. It means that every negative outcome on the field will take on added meaning. Every setback and bad break will be an extension of the recent history of disappointment and futility.

It certainly won’t be a season to assuage someone with an offhanded assertion that “it’s still early,” unless you are seeking to be rebuked by an ornery fan.

Of course, baseball is a game of failure, and there will be plenty of it in the season ahead. More than a thousand runners will be left on base. Likely more than 100 double plays grounded into. Well over 1,000 strikeouts. Likely more than last year’s 71 errors committed. Somewhere close to 500 walks allowed and 200 home runs against Jays pitchers.

Even in the best-case scenarios for the Blue Jays, they’ll lose around 60 games. That’s at least two full months of days and evenings in which fans will end the day on a bad note.

When you consider it all this way … man, does supporting the Blue Jays ever sound like a lousy existence. When did we become as miserable as (gulp) Yankees fans?

(Some of this perspective clearly comes from the author of this piece being so utterly and terminally online, a place where people aren’t likely to show up to declare how sanguine they feel or how well-adjusted they are.)

So, why do it? Why commit to the next six months of misery and suffering and torment? Especially in the scant few days of warmth and sunshine and summer that are allotted to Canadians?

Maybe it’s because under all of the dust and ashes of past misfortune, there’s some glimmering lights of optimism to be found.

Emerging players such as Davis Schneider and Ernie Clement played their way into roles on the big-league roster by following a good finish to 2023 with a solid spring this year. And Bowden Francis has built upon a succession of improvements to arrive on the roster as a plausible contributor to the rotation this year and in the future.

There is also the matter of a certain Hall of Fame-worthy Canadian who was signed late in the off-season. While even Joey Votto would agree that there are no guarantees for how he could fit in this roster or contribute to the Blue Jays’ success, the possibilities for a finally healthy generational hitter to have real and meaningful moments in his hometown at long last is an exciting possibility.

And finally, there are Guerrero Jr. and Bichette themselves. Every player says all the right things in February and March, but the Jays’ franchise cornerstones arrived in camp carrying themselves much differently, both physically and mentally. They look and sound prepared to grasp the responsibility of leading the team on the field and in the clubhouse, no longer willing to allow others to serve as the veterans on the team.

It could be that the history of this club in the context of this competitive window will continue to cast a considerable shadow over the team’s fortunes and the fanbase’s mood. But ultimately, fans support a team because they want them to succeed. Hopes for the 2024 Toronto Blue Jays may be diminished, but they aren’t extinguished.

And hope is a powerful thing.

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Well, OK. Not so much.

This is something of a rite of spring that, after months in the extended winter darkness, with only scant transactions and not nearly enough baseball to warm our souls, we greet the first bits of game action with glee. And then, almost as quickly, with bemusement. Like a round of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the games are somewhat absurd, and the points don’t matter.

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Sportsnet is your home for Toronto Blue Jays Grapefruit League action. Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ will broadcast 26 games from Florida as the Blue Jays gear up for the 2024 season.

Blue Jays spring training schedule

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But this is not to insinuate that the next month of action in the Florida sun is inconsequential. To borrow Grantland Rice’s much-quoted aphorism, the pertinent question at the end of each day is not if the pre-season Blue Jays win or lose, but how they play the game.

For a team that is entering a critical season, and with much to prove, the Jays enter the 2024 campaign with some lingering intrigue in terms of the roster and roles. While there is a set core of the team approaching the coming weeks as a period to shake off the rust, avoid the damage that rogue sprinkler heads can cause to critical ligaments, and get prepared for the long grind ahead, there remain a number of open questions as to what the team may resemble in the months ahead.

If the outcomes of the games themselves are not meaningful, there are compelling reasons to watch the Blue Jays action in the coming weeks. The answers to some of these open questions are sure to reveal themselves in the lineups and outcomes in the weeks ahead.

The Infield Picture: Between the guys who were already here and the dudes that were brought in over the off-season, there are a lot of bodies to fill similar roles around second base and third base this season. In the absence of — and assuming no late off-season reunion with third baseman — Matt Chapman, the roster was filled this winter with imperfect replacements.

Is Isiah Kiner-Falefa truly the most likely at this point to get the most starts at the hot corner? Or might Justin Turner get more time in the field than one supposes? The current assumption seems to be that Turner will see most of his time at DH, and that is where he is listed on the Jays’ current 40-man roster. But he did play 62 games at third in 2022, and 143 games there in 2021, when he wasn’t blocked off the position by an all-star and franchise cornerstone, as he was with Rafael Devers in Boston last year.

Even more compelling might be the battle to be Bo Bichette’s double-play partner in the middle of the diamond. One-time all-star Santiago Espinal will compete for time with franchise fixture Cavan Biggio, as well as with last year’s shooting star, Davis Schneider. Not to mention top positional prospect Orelvis Martinez, or non-roster invite and good vibes guy Eduardo Escobar.

The Blue Jays appreciate positional flexibility in their roster, and all seven of those players will likely see time at other spots around the field as the regular season approaches. Without putting too much stock in spring training results, how they perform in the coming weeks and how they are used may be telling.

The Rotation Depth: Despite the big hair and broad grins that he brought into spring training, Alek Manoah’s initial outing may not necessarily assuage some of the concerns that Jays fans may have carried into this season.

Moreover, one simply cannot comfortably assume that the Jays will maintain the excellent record of health and effectiveness from the rest of their rotation as they saw last season. (Although, at this point, pitcher health seems like an organizational strength under the current management regime, and not simply a matter of good fortune.)

Depending on Manoah’s work this spring, he could see competition at the back of the rotation from a number of other hurlers on the roster bubble. Chad Dallas looked effective in his first spring outing and Mitch White has shown flashes of something resembling a major-league depth arm at the end of last year and in the spring.

Yariel Rodriguez, perhaps this off-season’s most intriguing signing, could potentially enter the picture as a rotation option, despite not having thrown a competitive pitch since last year’s World Baseball Classic. And Ricky Tiedemann’s health and performance this spring may provide some insight as to where he sits on the depth chart, and when he may see his first big-league action.

The 26^th Man: The new roster rules require the Blue Jays to carry 13 position players on their active roster, which they have seemingly done under protest in recent years. Players like Bradley Zimmer or Jonathan Davis were generally limited to duties as pinch runners and defensive replacements, roles which matched their capabilities.

The role this year is likely to be filled by one of the long list of infielders mentioned above, especially if they happen to have an outfielder’s glove in their locker. With only four outfielders listed on the 40-man roster, having some capable depth in that area may be helpful.

Minor-league veterans Nathan Lukes and Ernie Clement could potentially slide into that role, although the former seems like a superfluous left-handed bat on the bench, and the latter’s best role is as a backup shortstop to Bichette, who is averse to taking days off.

If the role returns to being less about the bat and more about speed and fielding, Cam Eden could find his way onto the roster as an outfield caddie, and his presence on the roster in the post-season speaks to the management’s appreciation of his skills.

Daniel Vogelbach’s lefty bat might not seem quite so superfluous, especially if his role is narrowed to mashing right-handed pitchers as a DH. His presence on the roster would require more flexibility from the rest of the bench, so it will bear watching how much of a look he gets this pre-season.

And as a long shot (and personal favourite), Rafael Lantigua posted a .425 OBP and an .893 OPS in Buffalo last year while taking the field in six different positions. Lantigua is a mostly unheralded prospect, if he’s even considered that given his age (turning 26 in April) and size (listed at five-foot-seven). But last year, when watching the Bisons to see other more notable prospects, Lantigua always seemed to stand out as poised, professional and productive. You could do far worse than that for the deepest depth of the bench.

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The Toronto Blue Jays entered this off-season amidst a crisis of confidence among their fanbase, brought on by a fourth consecutive demoralizing finish to their season and some misaligned explanations for how it all went wrong. While they entered the offseason with several priorities to shore up their roster, the largest task at hand was rebuilding trust.

There are a few conceivable scenarios that would allow a team to dig themselves out of such a deep hole in one fell swoop. It’s a tribute to the exceptional and unique status of Shohei Ohtani as a transcendent athlete that his signing would certainly have done that. And more.

As the murmurs of the Jays’ interest in Ohtani grew in recent weeks, and the few breadcrumbs of details that dropped indicated that the interest may have been reciprocated, fans’ incredulousness at the notion of this once-in-a-century player coming north of the border began to soften. The reasons why it wouldn’t happen took a backseat in the public discourse to the myriad of reasons why it could or should.

Even as fans were aware that it might be a long shot, and that they shouldn’t let their hearts open too much to the notion, visions of Ohtani in a Blue Jays uniform danced in their heads.

It’s not hyperbole to suggest that Ohtani would have been the single biggest free agent acquisition by a Canadian professional sports team in history. He would have fundamentally changed the direction of the franchise, and the future of the business of sports in Canada.

But beyond that – deeper than that – Ohtani choosing the Blue Jays, Toronto, and Canada, would have provided us all with some of the validation that we as Canadians innately seek from beyond our borders. As American pundits spoke of this market as though it were some NL Central Division outpost, like Milwaukee or Pittsburgh, the desire to see them proven wrong only grew stronger.

It wasn’t just about Ohtani choosing the Blue Jays. It was about him choosing us.

By the time we found ourselves following the flight paths of private jets and willing to believe the sparsest of reports that affirmed his route north, the Japanese slugger-hurler’s decision meant so much more than just a transaction.

From those pitched emotional heights, the fall was always going to be painful. When Ohtani announced on his Instagram account that he intended to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers for an almost inconceivable amount of money, the thud at the bottom of that fall resonated for Jays fans.

The blowback is still evolving, days later. A potent mix of sadness and disappointment has given way to anger and cynicism. Invective spewed at reporters who got details wrong mixed with conspiracy theories over who was pulling which strings, how the Blue Jays and their fans were used as pawns, and ultimately, the rationale for booing Ohtani when he arrives at Rogers Centre in late April.

If there is any solace for the Blue Jays’ front office, it is that they are only one of many targets for the fans’ ire. But the eyes of many are now turning to Ross Atkins and Mark Shapiro to understand what their plans are now.

In fairness, the Blue Jays are not farther behind today than they were at the outset of the offseason. They still need a left-handed bat, an outfielder, and a third baseman. The market for position players was always thin this off-season, so the options to fill those positions are not markedly worse today than they were a few weeks back.

Moreover, the Jays’ serious pursuit should indicate that they intend to again be a significant player in the free agent market. Unfortunately, there is a steep drop off from signing Shohei Ohtani to cobbling together an offseason haul with the remainder of the players available. 

Which raises the question: Is it better to have pursued Ohtani and lost than to have never attempted to sign him?

For a team that desperately needs to rebuild trust with the fanbase, demonstrating the seriousness of your commitment to winning should be seen as a positive. But losing the Ohtani sweepstakes only raises the stakes for every subsequent move and acquisition to come. His success – and that of the Dodgers – will be a measuring stick against which the Blue Jays will be measured.

With that frame of reference, there’s almost nothing the Blue Jays can do from now until the season begins will measure up. Frankly, there might not be anything in the coming decade that will fill the void of what could have been.

Through this monumental pursuit, the stakes have been raised. When the Blue Jays return to the field and begin to play games that matter, the urgency to win and win now has been raised even higher than they were at last season’s painful conclusion.

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Last week, Toronto Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins took to the stage to address the press, and through them, his core constituency, the fans. And his message, so far as there was one, was that everything was fine. Everything went as planned, but also, neither he nor anyone in particular bore any specific responsibility for anything that might have appeared to go wrong.

From the demeanour of the general manager, the fans’ profound disappointment in the Blue Jays’ season — and another spirit-crushing conclusion — seemed not to have pierced the bubble of the front office. After four straight seasons ending in an acutely painful manner, a bland reassurance that all was well wasn’t the response that anyone was seeking.

This is especially the case after the season came crashing down around three things: A chronically underperforming offence; a too-clever-by-half strategic decision, whose deployment seemed disconnected from the actual game; and baserunning that was equal parts obtuse and overzealous.

For Jays fans, these were not isolated incidents. Rather, they were the summation of a promising season gone awry. Or, maybe more to the point, they were promises broken.

The response from the front office, through Atkins, seemed to show only the vaguest levels of concern over how the wild-card series and the season played out. Moreover, it seemed more oriented toward deflecting blame and minimizing the front office’s role.

The Blue Jays have long preached that they are an organization with a collaborative approach. But Atkins’ responses last week might have served to only heighten the concerns of some fans that this collective approach has as much to do with diffusing blame as it does with building a greater decision-making model.

This all matters to fans because they feel the frustration of the past season, and the growing disgruntlement over a succession of teams that always seemed to stop short of reaching their promise. When the response from the team’s off-field leadership seems aloof and unconcerned, there is a trust that is broken.

These fans are clearly aware of the steep challenges that await in the coming seasons, especially playing in the American League East. Fans see the Baltimore Orioles, whose ascendancy has seen them speed past the Jays. They see the Tampa Bay Rays, who perpetually exceed expectations. And they see the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, who won’t accept the disappointing seasons like the ones they’ve just concluded. Maybe most importantly, they remember how the Jays looked playing against those divisional rivals this past season.

Jays fans just went through a season of torment, wherein the Jays had the most minute margin for error. They never went on an extended run of great play, and seemed built to win (or lose) games 3-2. Every night. It was exhausting, and for much of the season, not especially fun.

In the face of all of that past displeasure and future disquiet, the current brain trust’s response thus far has been deeply inadequate. And it matters because when the business side of the Blue Jays starts peddling hope for 2024, it will find itself with a far more difficult task, selling to a far more cynical fanbase.

And yes, to be fair, the building block upon which the next team is built will be an 89-win playoff team with arguably the best pitching staff in the big leagues. There may be some offensive upside there too, supposing that there is any urgency to understand and address why the entirety of the roster seemed to underwhelm at the plate.

“Action is eloquence,” Shakespeare once wrote. It’s not what you say you are or what you proclaim to value that matters, it’s what you actually do.

Blue Jays fans have heard a lot of talk in recent years about the team’s organizational commitment to winning. But for many fans to commit their time, energy, attention and dollars to another season of this team, they’ll need something more than platitudes to help seal their trust, and keep their faith. 

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Eliot probably wasn’t a baseball fan. If he were, he might have recognized the cruelty that the month of September imposes on the devotees of the game.

“Meaningful baseball in September” is what fans pine for when their team is languishing. But once a team begins to play those consequential games, September is the month when the long season gets very short. The painful sprint at the end of a marathon. After five months of building context, September is when a team’s season is truly given meaning.

Sometimes, that means subverting the narrative that has led up to the final month of the schedule. In 1987, the Toronto Blue Jays might have been the best team in baseball for much of the season, and the high point in the franchise’s history to that point. But a calamitous final two weeks marked by key injuries and a losing skid left that year’s team out of the playoffs, effectively negating many of the good things that happened that season. It remains one of the bitterest pills that the Jays fans have ever swallowed.

At other times, September can reinforce all that has preceded it into the chronology. This year’s Blue Jays can scarcely be discussed without the words “frustrating” and “disappointing” being featured prominently. After more than five maddening months, a team that seemed poised at the outset of the season to ascend to a new level of prominence now sits perilously on the precipice of the lowest playoff seed.

The Blue Jays have left themselves little or no margin for error in these final weeks. As they cling desperately to the last rung on the post-season ladder, the chatter at the outset of nearly every series has been that the team needs to sweep each one to keep their playoff dream alive. Every game is a “must win”. If there is a hint of Eliot’s irony in such stated expectations, it certainly gets lost by the time the first pitch is thrown.

Baseball is inherently a game of failure. This is because almost every aspect of the game is unfathomably difficult. It’s what makes baseball great. At the best of times, hitters still fail more often than they succeed, and 2023 has been far from the best of times for Blue Jays batters.

Baseball is also a game of luck, but by September, fewer fans are inclined to hear the music of chance.

To enter September with so little room for failure means that each disappointment takes on added meaning, far more than any particular moment should be asked to bear. But every ground ball with runners in scoring position echoes that much louder given every missed RISP opportunity throughout the summer. Every at-bat is more than just a sequence of pitches leading to an outcome. It has the possibility to be a referendum on the season as a whole.

And if you really think about, it might even be bigger than that. It might be about the future of the franchise.

With that level of portent attached to every pitch, it’s no wonder that September baseball can feel painful in the moment, and unbearably draining through the course of a game. We’re beyond the point of reason or nuance, and into an almost purely emotional state.

You may be able to intellectualize the game in June, but in this sort of September, with this sort of team, the experience is physical. It’s tension headaches and nausea, and the feeling of cold dread at slightest setback.

Of course, there is the upside.

There is a decent chance that the Blue Jays hang in, at least well enough to put their fans through the wringer right through the final week of the season. Meaning weeks of trepidation and high anxiety. But all of this punctuated by moments of pure elation should they be able to hang in, or even have the stretch of sustained good play that has been awaited for most of the season.

Those moments become indelible memories, deeply ingrained in the psyche of the fanbase, and historical touchstones that remind us of why we come back and subject ourselves to this oppressive torment.

If it all goes well, then there will be the playoffs, which are their own special sort of suffering. It’s all that a fan could hope for.

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Not that a bit of pedantry – if tempered with good humour and genuine curiosity – is necessarily a bad thing. Over the past 30 years, it has changed the way that fans observe and understand, and mostly for the better.

But at times, cold-eyed scrutiny occasionally diminishes the fun of the game. As analysis replaces narrative, what is valued about baseball is not what you feel about the game, but what you can prove. And maybe more to the point, what you can monetize.

A place where this rational approach to the game and its history and traditions come into a degree of conflict is at the annual All-Star Game, both in the lead up to the game and the structure of the week itself.

At its core, there is the game, an “exhibition.” This is a term that, at times, gets used to diminish whatever importance could ever get applied to the contest. From the purely rational point of view, the game doesn’t count, and the points and stats don’t really matter. It is, in this way, meaningless.

But there is more than one way to understand the game. There is meaning derived from analysis, and meaning ascribed through the history of the game. Not just the boxscore or the Baseball Savant readings of Tuesday’s contest, but the contextualization of the moment into the long chronicle of baseball events.

Undeniably, the game has its flaws. Sometimes the fans pack the ballot box, pick the wrong starters and skew the perception of who is deserving of recognition. Although, perhaps due to the widespread understanding of the analysis of the game, fans in recent years have generally voted in a respectful slate of hitters into the mid-season classic.

The teams are also not selected purely to pick the best of the best players to field the best team, but also to ensure representation by all MLB teams. Some players get off to a hot start, and six good and timely weeks of baseball suddenly see them getting the nod. Or other players make the roster simply because there is no one on their team who is having a good season, or because there is a need for a representative who plays a certain position. Each year, the rosters contain a number of these aberrations and historical anomalies.

And thus, the game is also not managed strictly to win, but rather to ensure that the greatest number of players get their opportunity to take the field.

A key moment in feeding the cynicism around the All-Star Game was the 2002 edition, in which the deficiencies of how the game can be managed were taken to an absurd degree, leaving both teams without enough pitching to see the game through to its conclusion. The image of then-commissioner Bud Selig convening with on-field staff to decide that the game would end in a tie, amongst fans chanting “Let them play!”, remains a low point in the game’s history.

And even more so, the ill-considered subsequent decision to make the game “count” by having it decide home field advantage in the World Series, as some sort of corrective for the slew of poor decisions in the previous game.

But for all this quibbling and picking of nits, and even though the All-Star Game doesn’t matter, it still retains plenty of meaning.

It certainly matters for the players. Over the past week, we’ve seen countless videos of players being informed that they were selected to play in the game, and while we can’t precisely quantify what those smiles and tears meant, it’s clear that in the context of a player’s long journey – and sometimes short career – in baseball, this is consequential.

It matters to the fans as well. To see the players from the teams that they support throughout the season make the squad, and also to see some of their favourite players around the league participate. A funny aspect of the propensity to carp over the All-Star “snubs” each season is that most of those snubbed players end up on the roster within days. Even though the game might not matter, it’s clear that fans still care.

And once the game begins, there is no other exhibition that can compare to baseball’s. Despite all manner of format tweaking, hockey and basketball’s All-Star Games have become dreary and unwatchable in recent years.

But once the first hitter steps into the batter’s box and the starting pitcher stares in at him on Tuesday, there’s no faking baseball. There’s no playing at half speed. Every pitch is competitive and every ball in play is played to attain the best possible conclusion. The game’s best players – or a pretty reasonable approximation thereof – play like the game’s best players. And if you’re a baseball fan, that’s still pretty compelling.

And though the game doesn’t hold the same level of drama as a pennant chase or a playoff game, there are still an abundance of memorable moments that fans carry with them from decades of All-Star Games. Fred Lynn’s 1983 grand slam off Atlee Hammaker, sparking the American League’s rare win. Cal Ripken Jr.’s swan song home run of Chan-ho Park. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s tape measure shot in Colorado in 2021.

The All-Star Game may be inconsequential to the standings and the leaderboards in 2023, but there’s a very good chance that something truly memorable – and historical – will happen on Tuesday.

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The customary entreaties at this point of the season are usually reminders that “it’s a long season” and “it’s early”, but thus far, this season has hit differently. From the outset, there’s been urgency and expectation.

It stands to reason, though, given where the Blue Jays are in their competitive window, and their history in general. Five years ago, if you were looking at the future development of the club and their then-prospects Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, you could have counted off the years and found yourself targeting 2023 as the year where they would begin to hit their peaks, and team around them should be sufficiently constructed to support them.

From the current perspective, we’ve seen the development of those two players, as well as the disappointments of the past two seasons’ endings. We’ve seen the front office make what appears to be honest and tough assessments of the team, and the necessary adjustments in personnel to push the team from good to great.

If previous seasons were met with enthusiasm by fans, this year was met with expectation. Being competitive this year would not suffice, nor would hanging around the edges of the wild card race. It isn’t quite an “all in” season, but fans have staked a large portion of their passion into this season’s success.

It’s made the first five weeks feel very nervy. Anxious, even.

It certainly doesn’t rachet the tension down to see the dreaded Tampa Bay Rays – the Blue Jays’ most dreaded AL East rival – jump out to a historically great start, seemingly leaving their divisional combatants in the dust before they had even faced most of them directly. By the time the devilish Rays had finally squared up directly with the Jays, the games took on as aura of “must win”.

It was April. It was absurd. And yet, there we were.

Series wins against the Rays, the New York Yankees, and last year’s heartbreakers, the Seattle Mariners, were perhaps enough buoy the spirits and feed the excitement of Jays fans. Having two of those series happened in the packed and freshly refurbished environs of the home ballpark only helped to magnify the feverish anticipation.

Pausing for a moment on the remodelling of the ballpark, it seems very much aligned with the changes on the field. As the team’s executive leadership wasn’t satisfied with well enough when it came to the atmosphere and amenities within the Rogers Centre, they also spent the offseason reconstructing the roster of a team that had won 92 games the previous season and could have been seen as ascendent even if they had taken a status quo approach to the offseason.

And much as the new architecture and construction of the stadium’s outfield seems to have made an impression and a difference for the fans, the team on the field seems to have been cleverly engineered to be more competent and competent.

That’s not to say that the season has been flawless and smooth thus far. The putative staff ace coming into the season, Alek Manoah, has been the team’s least effective starter to this point. And although Kevin Gausman has looked Cy Young worthy in most outings, he’s had two disaster starts that make confidence hard to find for fans.

Moreover, the bullpen has had some shaky days and nights, and whether if that is because of John Schneider’s management of his pitchers or their performance, it certainly doesn’t allow a fan to relax on a late inning lead. Certainly not with the memory of last year’s Wild Card round seemingly impossible to suppress.

Still, one of the overriding senses drawn from this early part of the schedule is the resiliency of this iteration of the Blue Jays. They have come back from early deficits, scrapped and clawed and hung in to win games. When they’ve lost, they’ve generally bounced back. When they’ve had a bad series, like last week in Boston, they seem to be able to recognize their faults and correct them quickly.

The 2023 Blue Jays don’t get shook, they shake it off.

That knowledge might have previously been enough reason for confidence, but even with the team’s ability to stand up and push back, fans can be permitted their uneasiness. A good start to the season still has the Jays staring up at the Rays and the Baltimore Orioles in the AL East, with the Yankees being the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox proving themselves last week to not be the doormat that some had suspected.

Moreover, the next six weeks of their schedule is completely filled with legitimate contenders. Yes, it is early, and yes, the season is long. But this next stretch is going to be grind on the team, not to mention the emotions of the fanbase. 

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For a franchise that has had more than its share of crushing conclusions, the end of the 2022 campaign ranks amongst the very worst. If some Jays supporters of a certain vintage instinctively think back to the last week of the 1987 season as their touchstone for the most devastating moment of fandom, one could certainly imagine this generation holding onto last weekend’s loss to the Mariners for the coming decades.

That disillusionment and despair will gnaw at the faithful for much of the next few months. Not only was the ending shockingly soul-crushing, but the season as a whole was deeply confounding at times, especially given the sky-high expectations entering the season. 

There are some years where the fan base can reach the season’s conclusion with some degree of equanimity, and an ability to appreciate the positives of the season with hope for the future. But this is unlikely to be one of those.

Much will be scrutinized over the coming months, from the front office’s decisions last off-season and at the trade deadline, down to the granular choices of the on-field management in the final game. Some will do it to understand what went wrong, and others will do it to assess blame and to add to a list of grievances with the franchise’s current regime.

Regardless of the motivation, the instinct to parse through what happened is mostly understandable. It’s hard to ask fans to “trust the process” after a spectacular blow-up like that.

It’s also way too early for most to look on the brighter side of the season. Still, despite some flaws, the Blue Jays established themselves as a team that should be considered a contender. They finished the season a game ahead of last season, and in the post-season, for whatever that was worth.

They also still have most of their MLB roster returning next season. While some may want to turn over the roster out of anger or spite at the moment, having a big-league roster that’s mostly set allows the team to either make some targeted acquisitions to address the weaknesses on the roster, or to deal from major-league depth. 

Despite the massive letdown last weekend, there were several players who stepped forward last season to assert themselves as key members of a future championship contender. Alek Manoah, Jordan Romano, Alejandro Kirk and Santiago Espinal all provided all-star level contributions this season, and likely more than we would have expected at the outset of the year.

And while franchise cornerstones Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette didn’t vastly improve on their 2021 performances, they contributed enough to assert their place as elite contributors to a young core.

There are clearly areas for deeper scrutiny, such as the rotation, the bench depth and a different look from the bullpen. Despite the instinct to want to blow the roster up and start anew, the upside – to the extent that anyone might want to hear it at this moment – is that the Blue Jays are closer to the beginning of their competitive window than the end.

They didn’t meet the highest of expectations, either for an AL East pennant or for a deep run in the playoffs. Their 92 wins sit close to what some projection systems figured for them, though fans could be excused if they came into the season anticipating closer to 100 wins. But the difference between where they finished and the highest end of expectations is approximately one additional win every three weeks.

This isn’t to assume that the current roster could come back and necessarily replicate what they did this year. Progress, as the newer saying goes, isn’t linear. They could address deficiencies and still end up with a lesser record next season.

Their division will remain highly competitive, and though the schedule is somewhat more balanced next year, the Blue Jays’ fortunes will still largely depend on how they are able to compete against their AL East rivals.

And while there is a narrative that young teams learn to win by facing adversity through difficult losses, it’s worth reviewing the history of the seasons between the 1987 collapse and the eventual glory of 1992 and 1993. Those years saw playoff defeats in 1989 and 1991, and another epic fail of a finish in 1990. The elation in those championship seasons wasn’t just about the win, but also about finally being able to exhale after years of assuming the worst.

And for as much as Blue Jays fans might want to look ahead and put such a profound disappointment behind them, it will be hard not to be skeptical as the team moves forward, and apprehensive at every step along the way.

Such a crushing defeat brings with it much higher expectations if fans are to invest their bruised sense of hope in the future. 

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The Blue Jays sit at 50-43, holding on to a playoff spot in a season where the competition for those spots became increasingly ferocious in the lead up to the break. As far as potential outcomes go, this is not the most dire one that could have been imagined.

But, it is certainly not what many hoped.

The Blue Jays have not lived up to expectations in 2022. But then, when you pause to consider that AL East pennants and 100-win seasons and World Series championships were well within the scope of many fans’ outlooks, it would have been hard not to disappoint.

Still, there’s a cynicism that rests inside the hearts of many sports fans, where they feel as though they have been sold a bill of goods, and not received nearly what they expected.

The gripe is about “hype.”

This is a complaint that has drifted into my own social-media mentions almost annually, and whenever there is the slightest air of positivity around the team coming out of spring training. The allegation being that there is some conspiracy of the team and the media and even a distant outsider fan blogger to confabulate some level of anticipation in order to deceive the fans into belief and out of their money.

Of course, that’s ridiculous. Every team that is in any way approaching the season with even a shred of optimism elicits dreamy “what if” coverage in February and March, because the real games have yet to begin, and because those pundits who would invest a lot of time and column inches on pessimism in the cold of winter are probably not much of a fun hang.

And if there is one thing that a fan needs to hold close to their soul at a moment like this, it’s that baseball is supposed to be fun.

Which isn’t to say that a baseball season isn’t filled with its share misery. A full, night-in, night-out season of baseball is a messy thing.

When we look back to the glory days of 2015-16 or 1992-93, it’s all in tightly-edited, well curated celebratory reminiscences. But every season has blowouts and bad at bats and busted strategy and hung cement mixers and lost command and prolonged slumps. Most runners are left in scoring position every day and every year in baseball. Because hey, that’s baseball.

Baseball is a game of so much failure, and when you’re in the midst of a moment, it’s hard to find the perspective to shrug off the disappointment of the moment.

Now that we’ve seen the reality of the 2022 Blue Jays — and the season in which they are competing — the optimism found in the temperate Dunedin sunshine gives way to a more hardened, 41-games-in-40-hot-stinky-days realism.

So how do fans look beyond the “hype” and find enthusiasm for the stretch run?

This year’s Blue Jays have unquestionably been a disappointment. But even with that, it seems as though there remains room for improvement. Outside of Alek Manoah, Alejandro Kirk and Jordan Romano, there’s a good argument that there’s plenty of upside to be found from the players currently on the roster. And they have had the tendency over the past couple of seasons to finish stronger than they started.

Moreover, the Jays’ first half schedule was by some measures, such as ESPN’s Relative Power Index, the most difficult of any team in MLB. Which isn’t to say that it’s easy from now on, but there’s perhaps the possibility of making up some games on their fellow Wild Card contenders.

And then there’s the potential that remains unknown. The Blue Jays’ organizational leadership has shown a willingness to be aggressive in acquiring pieces to help the team push forward in this competitive window. While they tend to be most aggressive in the off-season, there’s the potential for moves in the coming weeks that cleverly complement a roster that remains very talented. Or … there’s the potential for something that alters history. At least, baseball history.

Even with the chances at a division pennant fading into the distance, this team begins the second half solidly in the mix, well-positioned to embark on a competitive race for the top Wild Card spot.

It’ll be messy at times. There will be frustration and bad days along the way. But all of that only serves to build the tension, raise the stakes, and make the push towards the post-season that much more impassioned and memorable.

Seems like that could make for a few months of big baseball fun, doesn’t it?

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Some folks catalyze that shock and instinctive panic into elation and joy. For other folks, the terror just becomes a deeper existential angst.

And so it is with the 2022 Toronto Blue Jays’ season thus far. Some folks may be relishing the daily agony of the turbulent first third of season, while others have had their nerves frayed by the near constant state of unease.

One could probably trace through many other seasons in Jays history, and find similar streaks of highs and lows, but this season certainly feels as angst-ridden as any in the franchise’s past. The expectations for this season have been high from the very outset, and the early part of the schedule has featured a constant barrage of games that have been harrowingly close, or have felt like “must-win” games even though we have yet to reach the summer solstice.

In some ways, the well-worn line about every season being a “long season” is being redefined by these Blue Jays. Previously, this would have been a call for calm; an invocation for people to relax and not lose their minds over an early season loss. But after missing the playoffs by a single game last year, it has been entirely predictable that any mid-week afternoon loss to a sub-.500 team takes on added weight and meaning.

It hasn’t helped that even as the Blue Jays have spent more than a month playing like the elite contender that was expected, they still haven’t made up much ground on their competition. This, after a first month of the season where every game felt like Game Seven in the Battle for Your Sanity and Soul.

Certainly, the Blue Jays have played well enough and seem well-positioned for a post-season run. But checking the standings, and seeing themselves bunched closely with their division rivals in the Wild Card race while slipping further from the lead in the American League East is enough to give even the most level-headed fan some level of concern.

(The fact that we’ve been checking the standings since April should give some indication of the collective madness involved.)

When every night of a six-month-long schedule starts to feel like it is do-or-die, that makes for a very long season, indeed.

Were this any typical season of recent vintage, being solidly in a wild card spot and 19-9 over the past month would be enough to allow a fan to enjoy the moment. But when the Boston Red Sox have gone 21-9 and the New York Yankees have gone 22-7 over the same period, it’s hard to let your weary fandom revel in any relative level of success.

This hasn’t been any typical month, nor is this any typical season.

All of this only serves to heighten the meaning around this weekend’s series with Yankees, who, it has been ruefully noted by many, are very good. The Yankees’ lead in the division has reached 10 games, which begins to feel like insurmountable, even with two-thirds of the schedule remaining.

This, in a season with a new playoff format where the division title seems to have added importance. The Blue Jays could still win 95 or even 100 games, and possibly end up in a Wild Card series, maybe even on the road.

The Yankees’ lead may feel overwhelming, but the team is not invincible. If the Blue Jays are going to begin to make headway into cutting down the distance between themselves and the runaway league leaders, though, it certainly feels like this weekend’s series takes on added importance.

In some ways, this feels at this moment like the most meaningful series since the Jays and Kansas City Royals tangled at the end of July, 2015. After decades of frustration, that series was the first to truly have a playoff feel in Toronto, with a packed house and charged atmosphere. If the online ticket maps are any indication, this Rogers Centre will certainly be packed throughout the weekend.

Finding the meaning in a moment like this can be a tricky thing. There’s meaning that is inherent in the moment, and meaning that gets ascribed to it, and often, it’s only from the safe perspective and distance that time allows us that we can understand which meaning was felt and what meaning was real.

But living in the now, it certainly feels as though this weekend’s series will tell us much about who these Toronto Blue Jays are, and how high we can let our expectations soar for the rest of the year.

Try to remember to breathe. And enjoy the ride. 

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It’s still April — still early — and yet there were moments this weekend where the games took on a playoff atmosphere. We don’t have the historical measures, the sound levels in the stadium, and where any particular road of the crowd ranks in history, but it’s probably a good bet that the response to the replay review of Teoscar Hernández’s run-scoring slide on Friday night was a top-ten sonic boom under the dome.

Obviously, there have been great teams in the past, and they generated their own levels of excitement. The World Series teams should be the gold standards by which most other Blue Jays teams are measured, and there was clearly expectations for those teams. But that expectation was heavily tinged by several seasons of deep disappointment, where seasons concluded with heartbreak. By the time Mike Timlin finally flipped Otis Nixon’s futile bunt to Joe Carter to win the 1992 championship, the feeling was as much about relief as exhilaration.

The 1985 Blue Jays were the ones who finally broke through and reached the postseason, and while it seemed that the team had been building up to that moment, the feeling before the season was that they would still need to chase down the Detroit Tigers, who ran away with the AL East and the World Series the year before. The season was a slow build, as the Tigers fell back, and the Jays progressed and held off the New York Yankees to eventually win their first pennant.

The 2015 team is the most recent stand-out performance in the franchise’s history, but even that team was overwhelmingly greeted with doubt, both before and well into the schedule. Much of our happy recollections of that team stem from the dramatic turnaround in the last half of the season, but the first two months were a slog of underperformance, and speculation over how long before John Gibbons and/or Alex Anthopoulos were forced to walk the plank after another underwhelming season.

If any team compares to this year’s level of expectations, it was the 2013 Blue Jays, who entered the season on a high after having “won the off-season.” With the acquisition of five former All-Stars that winter, including the reigning NL Cy Young winner, and massive trade with the Miami Marlins, the Jays seemed to have pushed all their chips into the pot.

Fans entered that season’s opening week ready for something great, but by the ninth game of the season, they’d lost each of R.A Dickey and Josh Johnson’s first two starts.

That included an embarrassing 13-0 drubbing at the hands of the Red Sox in the first Sunday home game before more then 41,000 fans, where Dickey gave up five runs before the Jays got a turn at bat. It also included a chilly 11-1 loss to the Tigers in Detroit, where Johnson lasted an inning and a third and gave up six runs.

Whatever enthusiasm there was for that eventual fifth place team, it was mostly snuffed out before the weather warmed.

Does that unhappy memory provide any caution for this year? Perhaps, although there are fundamental differences between the two teams.

Where the expectations for the 2013 team were amped up over a matter of weeks in the winter, the anticipation for this year’s Blue Jays started as far back as the summer of 2015, when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was signed as a 16-year-old. Where other teams seemed like a momentary assemblage of stars, this feels like the start of a prolonged and sustainable period of running near the front of the pack of the American League East.

That the team was forced by a global pandemic out of their home stadium and country for most of two seasons only served to ratchet up the hopes and enthusiasm for this team. Tack on the generalized good vibes, fun demeanour and likeability of this roster, and you have as compelling a reason to get lost in your fervour as any team could have offered.

It will be a nearly impossible challenge to maintain this high level of enthusiasm through six full months of almost daily games. Indeed, four innings into the season, the snarkier birds were squawking on social media, in a ridiculous attempt to be the first ones to write off the season. Sunday afternoon wasn’t much better.

All baseball seasons are long seasons, even the great ones. In even the best circumstances, this team will lose at least 60 games. That’s fully two months’ worth of evenings left to stew in the bummer of a defeat. There will be losing streaks, and stretches where some typical failings will creep in to undermine the joyful spirit around this team.

There’s a long way to go before the Jays reach their goal of not only making the postseason, but making noise once they get there. Luckily, this team is also one of the most fun to watch in recent memory, and if fans need some energy to sustain their enthusiasm, they’ll certainly find it between the lines and in the dugout over the next six months.

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Baseball fans are now overwhelmed with excitement at this unique restart to functional baseball activities. This is an exceptional moment in baseball history, where the restorative feeling of players reporting to their respective training camps is combined with a version of the Winter Meetings, with monumental signings and trades on the verge of being announced at any moment.

For fans, it’s reviving to have baseball back, and to spend our time thinking about rosters and lineups rather than offers and counteroffers. The sun seems to be shining just a little brighter, as are the screens from our constantly updating devices, keeping track of the newest and latest developments or fresh images of players scratching and spitting.

Seeing players playing a game may not sound consequential, especially within the context of all the other troubles in the world. But for fans, it’s a reminder of one of the small but meaningful joys in our lives.

Still, fans can’t be blamed for some lingering cynicism after seeing the way that the stewards of the game managed this critical moment of change for the sport. While the outcome of these latest negotiations was always more likely to lean toward status quo as opposed to a sea change to the way that baseball teams deal with their players, it became increasingly clear through the weeks leading up to the resolution that fans expected more and better from the owners.

In that context, “winning” the labour talks couldn’t just be about the franchise owners imposing their leverage further on players, crushing or dividing the union in the process. Fans wouldn’t accept losing a significant portion of the season for such an outcome.

And make no mistake: The commissioner of MLB acknowledged both in words and actions that the fans’ incensed voices were heard. While the commissioner seemed glib and jovial at an earlier press conference to announce that games were removed from the schedule, his remarks upon the conclusion of the negotiations were subdued and studiously apologetic. Even if that was nothing more than public relations eyewash, it shows that there’s an understanding that the fans need to buy in to the sport again.

In many markets, rekindling the enthusiasm may pose a challenge. But no team’s fan base has more reason for excitement for the season to come than the Blue Jays’.

This coming season will be – knock on wood – a true homecoming for the Blue Jays and their fans. It will be the first complete season to be played at home in Toronto since 2019, a team that was at the nadir of its competitive cycle.

It will be a full season with the young talent emerging toward their primes, while the rest of the roster continues to be supplemented with compelling and established big leaguers.

It’s a team that was one of the best in baseball down the stretch last year, and came within a win of the postseason, playing in baseball’s most competitive division.

And they’ll play home games this year in Canada. At their home ballpark. In Toronto. In front of a full-throated, supportive home crowd.

Even removing any of the negatives from recent seasons, 2022 would have been a season you would have circled a half-decade ago as the one where everything started to come together. The mood of Jays fans was growing increasingly frustrated and grim through the lockout at the thought of having this shining moment robbed from them by labour shenanigans.

The resolution and relaunch of the season might give those fans in particular a valid excuse for looking beyond their cynicism at how the business of the sport is run, and ahead to what promises to be one of the most exciting seasons in the history of the franchise.

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Pondering the events and achievements of the Blue Jays’ 2021 season, it is easy to be surprised at just how momentous the season was. With a bit of time and distance, and as we turn the page on this calendar year, it’s equally possible to view 2021 as a missed opportunity, and as an unlikely achievement.

There were a multitude of built-in excuses for the Blue Jays to have an unremarkable season, not the least of which was the prolonged impact of the pandemic on their season. While every other team in the league began to return to something resembling normal, with stadiums partially or fully packed, border restrictions compelled the Jays to make the best of their minor league accommodations for an extended period.

Aside from the inconvenience, they played many “home” games early in the season with the stadium packed with fans of their division rivals jeering them with increasing vociferousness in the later innings. At least the team managed to make something back of the refreshment sales.

A 91-win season that was only good enough for a fourth-place finish is somehow fitting for this topsy-turvy year. As is having two legitimate MVP candidates finish second and third respectively to a player having a once-in-a-century season.

A Blue Jays pitcher brought home the Cy Young Award this season, and it wasn’t the staff ace they signed the previous year, nor their top pitching prospect emerging to dominance. Rather, it was Robbie Ray, a marginal lefty who signed a one-year pillow contract that was barely noticed amongst the greater free agent ambitions.

When we look back on this year, it will be hard not to remember a season filled with energetic grunts, nasty sliders, and a uniform so tightly packed that the seams appeared persistently in peril of exploding even more than Ray’s fastball out of his southpaw. It was such a memorable season that it’s easy to forget that Ray concluded his spring training by injuring himself falling down the stairs with a baby in his hands.

That Ray has left just as quickly makes the whole thing feel like something of a mirage.

Something that came into a more tangible focus this year was Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who entered the season as something of a question mark given the sky-high expectations, and a performance in his first two campaigns that teased and tormented fans.

In the early parts of the year, somewhere in your Instagram feeds, Guerrero Jr.’s figure seemed to take up fewer pixels on your screen as he sweated through a series of offseason workouts. It was encouraging, but fans know enough to wait for someone’s “best shape” to translate into tangible results.

But Vladdy delivered, instantly looking better in all aspects of his game. So much so, in fact, that fans remained somewhat apprehensive, even as he flirted with the Triple Crown and looked flexible and balletic at first base. It may have taken until he was elected to start and win the All-Star Game MVP before fans started to recognize that this was more than an extended hot streak. The Superstar that was promised had arrived, and while the MVP was out of reach this year, his trophy case was filled with a slew of other awards, from Silver Sluggers and the first team All-MLB, to being recognized as the best baseball player of the year from two countries, both the Dominican Republic and Canada.

In many calendar years, signing a player to the single largest contract in team history would probably rate as a highlight, but this year, it’s arguably a marginal footnote given all the other struggles and achievements.

The Blue Jays somewhat surprisingly locked up George Springer, maybe the best position player on the market, for seven years. Springer battled injuries throughout the season, and his on-field performance suffered as a result. Still, Springer hit 22 homers and drove in 50 runs in 78 games, posting a .907 OPS in that half-season. And he was the author of one of the Jays’ most memorable moments, hitting a three-run, go-ahead homer to cap a comeback win on August 8th against the Boston Red Sox, helping keep the team in the race for a playoff berth.

The season’s other remarkable comeback win came off the bat of Marcus Semien, in a September 3rd matchup against his old team, the Oakland A’s. Semien walked off with a three-run homer in the ninth, helping the Jays to keep pace with the A’s and the Mariners in the chase for the final playoff spot. It was one of 45 homers that Semien would hit, establishing a new record for second basemen, a milestone that might stand out more in any other season.

But 2021 was not like any other season, just as 2021 was unlike any other year that we will ever remember. Fans approached the season with muted hope, as the challenges of a second year under COVID continued to stress and strain at our mental and physical well-being. Still, the Jays remained a welcome distraction, even from the distance created by a closed border.

When the team finally returned to Canada on Friday, July 30th, it was an emotional moment for fans, and a turning point for the team. Seeing manager Charlie Montoyo welling up with tears at the reception from the fifty-percent capacity crowd, or Vladdy turning to provide a hug to the woman known affectionately as “Home Plate Lady”, or Santiago Espinal’s ridiculous bare-handed catch to conclude that day are memories that would be hard to describe without all of the context of the moment, as well as everything the team and the fans withstood this past year.

That the Blue Jays would go 40-23 from that point of the season only helped to leave the fan base with some level of optimism for what comes next.

If you insist on relitigating the negative, then, yes, the Blue Jays bullpen will stand out both for its erratic performance and its poor health. In a season where one game was the margin between going home or moving on, every or any misstep along the way can feel as though it is that much more meaningful, and the relief corps had more than their share.

But as we look ahead to 2022, there’s reason for optimism, whenever baseball gets started again. Aside from Guerrero, there’s Bo Bichette, who led the American League in hits, and made his first All-Star appearance. There’s the arrival and re-signing of José Berrios, and the emergence of Alek Manoah at the front of the rotation. Not to mention the December signing of Kevin Gausman as a potential replacement for Ray.

As we move forward, 2021 will be a year with too many specific details to remember, but too many moments that we’ll never forget. And with everything that emerged out of such a tumultuous season, there are interesting times ahead.