The Toronto Blue Jays arrived for spring training with the team’s franchise player unsigned. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. set a deadline – Feb. 18 – after which he said he would no longer negotiate.
When that day came and went, panic began to set in. What if, at the end of the season, he became a free agent? No doubt American League rivals like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox or the cash-heavy Los Angeles Dodgers would be interested.
At the same time, Toronto’s all-star shortstop Bo Bichette, whose contract also expires at the end of this season, had yet to reach terms. (He still hasn’t.)
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette's future with the Jays seemed uncertain at the start of the season.Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
Given the humiliating outcome of the past two winters – with the Blue Jays being spurned by superstar free agents Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto – to say nothing of the miserable 2024 season that saw them finish bottom of the American League East division, a sense of doom and gloom was starting to creep over the fanbase.
Losing both Mr. Guerrero and Mr. Bichette would probably have condemned the club to another rebuild, and would likely have resulted in an overhaul of the front office.
Against that backdrop, April 9, 2025, will go down as a landmark date in Blue Jays history, the day when Mr. Guerrero announced they’d signed a franchise-record, 14-year, US$500-million extension, giving him the chance to be a lifelong Blue Jay.
“This is a monumental moment in franchise history,” Blue Jays president and chief executive officer Mark Shapiro said in a statement at the time.
It was also a pivotal moment in a nascent season.
Fast-forward six months, and 150 games later, and the Blue Jays are back in the postseason as AL East champions for the first time since 2015. They’ll open their American League Division Series on Saturday at 4:08 p.m. ET at home against the New York Yankees.
The Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, two long-time rivals, played a pivotal winner-take-all wild-card game on Thursday night for the right to move on.
It’s been a long road back to relevance for the Blue Jays. After making the American League Championship Series in back-to-back years in 2015 and 2016, the team hasn’t won a single playoff game. They have made three wild-card appearances since then, but fell to a sweep on all three occasions.
Coming off a 74-88 last-place finish, the team’s only signing was a then-40-year-old Max Scherzer, who had been limited to nine appearances in 2024 owing to a series of injuries.
Even the most diehard of Blue Jays fans had to look hard for green shoots of optimism coming into the spring, and the start to the season hardly offered any extra reassurance on that front. The team played at or under .500 for most of the first two months, falling eight games back of the first-place Yankees.
But a critical turning point arrived in late May, when the team landed in Texas with a 25-27 record. The players singled out a pinch-hit, ninth-inning, two-run home run by Mr. Bichette against the Rangers to secure a series victory as a season-defining moment.
That started a streak during which the team won 12 of the next 14 contests.
“That turn in Texas catapulted us,” John Schneider, the Toronto manager, said.
The momentum the team built up proved hard to stop.
A four-game sweep of the Yankees in New York allowed the Blue Jays to overhaul the Bronx Bombers at the AL East summit on July 3, a position they maintained for the rest of the regular season.
But they weren’t done there.
Last weekend’s sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays clinched a division title for the first time in 10 years and secured a first-round bye in the playoffs.
Their 94 victories were the most in the league and are the fourth-most in the organization’s history, ensuring the team will have home-field advantage when the AL Divisional Series begins on Saturday.
Nobody, outside of the organization, would have predicted what happened. In a year, the Blue Jays went from worst to first and finished with 20 more wins than in 2024.
George Springer, in action with Guerrero Jr. against the Orioles, would reach an all-around high point in his career in 2025.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The Blue Jays have a handful of players other than Mr. Guerrero from which to choose their most valuable player.
Mr. Bichette still led the major leagues in hits until the final weekend of the season and finished with a .311 batting average, 18 home runs and a team-leading 94 runs driven in.
George Springer, the 36-year-old designated hitter and outfielder, had the best all-around year of his career. Mr. Springer had two hits or more in 48 games, batted above .300, hit .360 from the all-star break on, and led the club with 31 homers and 18 stolen bases. A year ago, he had the worst year in a dozen in the big leagues.
Alejandro Kirk flirted with .300 and finished at .282, the highest average among starting major-league catchers. In the division-clinching triumph, he homered twice and drove in six runs.
And then there was the supporting cast: Mr. Barger, Ernie Clement, Nathan Lukes, Davis Schneider, Daulton Varsho and others.
“There’s always hope,” utility player Davis Schneider said as he thought back to spring training. “Everybody wants to have a great season, but what’s important is what you build on over 162 games.”
Daulton Varsho just missed this catch against Kansas City on Sept. 20, when the Jays lost by one run. As the season advanced, the margin of error to win the division shrank.Ginnie Coleman/Getty Images
It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. As recently as Sept. 16, the Blue Jays held a five-game lead in their division. But after six losses in seven games, they needed to win their final four outings to claim the crown.
Toronto did so without Mr. Bichette, who missed the final 20 games with a knee injury, as well as starting pitchers Chris Bassitt and Jose Berrios, who ended the season on the injured list.
“I think it’s important not to panic at hard times,” Mr. Clement, who plays all infield positions other than first base, said. “That’s what we’ve been able to do all year. We have done a good job at weathering storms.”
There is still work to do with the division series looming. This is the farthest a Toronto team has gotten since 2016, when the team made the second of back-to-back league championship appearances, falling to Cleveland in five games.
Jays fans have turned out to the Rogers Centre in historic numbers to see the team's successes this year. The $1 hot dogs were an added bonus.Duane Cole/The Globe and Mail
At 54-27, Toronto ended up with the best regular-season home record in the American League and the second best in club history.
They drew just under 2.85 million spectators at Rogers Centre, the eighth most in club history. Thirty-four home games were sold out this season, including 22 straight from July 6 to Aug. 31, the most consecutive games with more than 40,000 fans since 2016.
“Fans here love the team,” said Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, a utility infielder. “When you walk around the city, you can feel the energy. I love it here. People really embrace us.”
The Blue Jays last won a World Series in six games in 1993 over Philadelphia on a dramatic home run by Joe Carter. They also won the preceding year. Since then, there hasn’t been much to write home about.
This offers them a chance, at least.
“You never know where a season is taking you,” John Schneider said. “It will chew you up and spit you out. It will make you think things that aren’t true.
“But this is why we make the sacrifices we make when it comes to family time and other things. This is why we do it.”
