Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hasn’t hit a regular season homer in Toronto’ Rogers Centre since Aug. 17, 2025. (Photo By Winslow Townson/Getty Images)
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Lost in the chaos of the current Major League Baseball season is the almost absolute collapse of the Blue Jays in their attempt at defending the American League title.
A year ago, the Jays lost to the Dodgers on the last pitch of the World Series in the 11th inning of Game 7 at Rogers Centre when Alejandro Kirk grounded into a double play. The tying run was on third and the winning run on first when Kirk bounced to shortstop Mookie Betts, who quickly stepped on second and threw on to Freddie Freeman at first.
The Dodgers won the game, 5-4, and the series, 4-3. The Jays haven’t been the same ever since.
The Jays returned home for the final two games with a 3-2 lead and had countless chances in Toronto to win the World Series. But it wasn’t to be.
“It just felt like everything that was supposed to go our way didn’t,” Ty France, who was with the Blue Jays then but is playing first base for the Padres now, told Forbes recently. “But then again, it could have been fate that they were supposed to win.”
Look at where the Jays are now. At 63-66, they are in fourth place in the AL East, 14 games behind the surprising first-place Rays. Only by the quirk of how bad the AL is this season – there are only five teams better than .500 – the Jays are only a half game behind the Twins for the league’s final of three Wild Card spots. The Yankees, at 9 1/2 games up and the Red Sox at 5 1/2 games up, are seemingly out of reach.
There are six other teams vying with the Jays for that spot, and even the 60-68 and horribly playing Mariners are within three games.
France was asked if he’s paying attention to it, thousands of miles away in another league, another division and on the west coast.
“Yeah, I do. I still follow a lot of those guys closely,” he said. “And yeah, I was a little surprised to see how everything unfolded this year. But it’s a different animal playing until Nov. 2 and then getting only a few weeks off before ramping up your program again. It’s taxing both physically and mentally.”
That didn’t affect the Dodgers, who started the 2025 season with a March series in Japan and also played all the way into November. They are 77-51, leading the National League West by nine games over the Padres and vying for the first MLB three-peat since the 1998 to 2000 Yankees.
The Jays Have Tried To Rebuild On The Fly
The Jays have lost a lot of key and component parts from last year’s pennant-winning team, although they signed right-hander Dylan Cease to a seven-year, $210 million free agent contract in the offseason. Thus far, to no avail.
They were sellers at the recent trade deadline shipping rotation anchor Kevin Gausman to the Cubs, outfielder Dalton Varsho to the Rangers and last season’s closer Jeff Hoffman to the Twins.
That’s in stark contrast to the 2025 deadline when the Jays added France and reliever Louis Varland at the buzzer from the Twins, starter Shane Bieber from Cleveland, and reliever Seranthony Dominguez from the Orioles.
The timing of the deal stunned France.
“Personally, I thought I was clear,” he said recalling how the Twins gutted their team in a fire sale. “I thought I was safe. And then I got the phone call.”
What a difference a year makes.
Last year at the deadline, the Jays were in a dog fight with the Yankees for the AL East title. Both teams ended the season with a 94-86 records, but the Jays finished first because they manhandled the Yankees during the regular season, winning eight of the 13 games. Head-to-head competition is the first tie-breaker now that a Game 163 playoff is no more.
That dominance continued into the postseason when the Jays wiped out the Yankees in a best-of-five AL Division Series in four games. They were 11-6 against the Yankees last year, winning with their brand of contact hitting baseball against New York’s penchant for relying on the Three True Outcomes: Homers, walks and strikeouts.
“I think we give pitching staffs different looks,” Jays manager John Schneider said last year after winning Game 1 of the World Series. “And being able to score in multiple ways is big for us, not waiting around for a three-run homer. If that happens, great. That’s kind of icing on the cake, if you will.”
The Yanks Are Still Doing What They Do, But the Jays Aren’t
The Yankees are still doing what they’re do, leading the AL with 175 homers and third with 1,168 strikeouts. This year, it’s the Rays giving them fits, the Yanks having lost six of the nine games played between the teams and trailing them in the division by four games. The Blue Jays play the Yanks in a three-game weekend series at Yankee Stadium beginning Friday night.
The Jays, who led all of MLB last year in hitting with a .265 team batting average, are 14th in MLB at .244 now.
A lot of that can be attributed to a change in personnel, not to mention lesser years from their key stars, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer, who have combined to hit 19 homers and drive in 84 runs. Guerrero, for some unexplained reason, hasn’t hit a homer in Toronto this season, his last regular-season homer at Rogers Centre coming on Aug. 17, 2025, although he did hit a grand slam in Game 2 of the ALDS against the Yankees.
Guerrero is currently on the seven-day injured list with concussion symptoms.
Eight players on the Blue Jays’ 26-man World Series roster are no longer with the team. That’s a 35% turnover and could explain why the Jays came out struggling and sank to a season-worst 46-56 record on July 17, just after the All-Star break. At the Aug. 3 trade deadline, they were still eight games under .500 precipitating the house cleaning.
But wouldn’t you know it? The Jays are 11-4 since then playing themselves back into the Wild Card race.
“I’m surprised it took so long for them, to get back into it, just because of the amount of talent that’s still in that room.” said France, who didn’t sign his one-year, $1.35 million free agent deal with the Padres until the eve of spring training on Feb. 15. “But at the same, I understand what we went through. It was a mental and physical grind.
“They were probably exhausted to start the year. That’s not an excuse, but it’s real.”
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