Did Loyalty Sink the 2026 Blue Jays?

The Blue Jays spent last winter believing in the team that nearly won the World Series. The greater mistake may have been continuing to believe after the team sputtered out of the gate.

Toronto finished 79-83, a rough reversal for a club that spent aggressively over the winter and entered the season expecting to contend.

The problem wasn't one decision. It was a pattern. The front office and coaching staff repeatedly chose patience over disruption, trusting that established players, clubhouse chemistry and the memories of 2025 would eventually pull the club back into contention.

The Jays are just the 10th MLB team in history to bookend a World Series appearance with losing seasons. The Rangers did it most recently in 2023.

Sure, Toronto eventually traded Kevin Gausman, Daulton Varsho and Jeff Hoffman, but not until the trade deadline. George Springer and Ernie Clement remained. So did Shane Bieber and Max Scherzer.

There were moments when it looked like the Jays would sneak into the playoffs, but they frequently acted as though the 2025 version of the team would rematerialize. It never did.

Now, Springer will walk with nothing in return. Clement looked more like a journeyman than an All-Star during the second half. Trading him (and his team control) at his peak value ahead of the trade deadline might have provided a strong prospect haul.

The Jays may have finished second in 2025, but they were not the second-best team in baseball from a talent and performance perspective. They managed to play mistake-free baseball for the most part while peaking at the right time.

Toronto's 2025 position players led baseball with 44 Fielding Runs Above Average, and the Jays finished second in the American League in runs. Springer, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and Alejandro Kirk all produced a wRC+ of at least 115 and more than 3.0 fWAR, while Ernie Clement also topped three wins largely through his defensive value.

It was almost magical how it came together. The team chemistry was out of this world.

Every front office tries to replicate chemistry and the good vibes that come with winning, but the formula isn’t easy to unlock.

The Jays didn’t take anything for granted in the offseason. Toronto committed hundreds of millions in new guaranteed money over the winter, more than any of their AL East rivals. They added Dylan Cease, Kazuma Okamoto and Tyler Rogers.

Cease was supposed to offset Chris Bassitt. On the field, there is no question he eclipsed Bassitt. Whether he filled Bassitt's leadership role in the clubhouse is harder to determine.

Okamoto had a fantastic rookie season, but he didn’t completely fill the void left by Bichette’s departure. In fact, the absence of Bichette in the lineup might have negatively impacted the types of pitches that Guerrero saw in 2026.

Few expected Springer to repeat his 2025 performance. His line last season was .309/.399/.560 with 32 home runs and a .959 OPS. In 2026, he came back to earth: roughly .249/.321/.405 with 15 home runs in 517 plate appearances.

There was still value there if the Jays could find a buyer.

On July 30, the Jays were in last place in the AL East, 5.5 games from the final Wild Card and sitting at approximately a seven percent chance of reaching the postseason. Springer was a pending free agent, exactly the type of veteran a selling team normally attempts to convert into future value.

General manager Ross Atkins provided a revealing explanation afterwards: "It was important for him to be here. We wanted him here as we continue to push forward." Some suggested that he stayed to keep advertisers happy. Perhaps both explanations can be true.

Springer did possess 10-and-5 rights, giving him the ability to veto a trade.

The franchise did a good job sending off Springer and Scherzer appropriately during the final game of the regular season, but one or both might have returned pieces capable of providing immediate or long-term help.

Would an analytically disciplined organization have recognized that Clement's underlying offensive profile made his first-half production an opportunity to sell high?

At the end of July, Clement was having a genuinely good season. Through 103 games, he was hitting .297 with eight home runs, 25 doubles and a 109 wRC+. He had also made his first All-Star team. Who would have guessed he’d hit .150 in September?

He finished around .261/.286/.366, but underneath those numbers sat a .258 xwOBA, .241 xBA and .318 xSLG. His average exit velocity was just 84.3 mph, his hard-hit rate was 20.7 per cent and his barrel rate was 2.1 per cent.

Was it realistic, given the start of the 2026 season, that either Springer or Clement would return to 2025 form?

Good organizations aren't disloyal. They are ruthless about recognizing when the market values one of their players more highly than their own projections do.

Tyler Heineman didn’t play all that much, but he was far from the backup who flirted with a .400 average early in 2025. Instead of bringing up Brandon Valenzuela early or finding another option, the Jays elected to give Heineman some space to rediscover his form.

By May 3, with Kirk injured, Heineman was batting .176 with a .398 OPS and still had not collected an extra-base hit. Meanwhile, Valenzuela had been called up and had already homered in two of his previous three starts.

Veteran leadership, pitcher preparation, game planning, communication and clubhouse influence largely go unseen by fans, but did the Jays wait too long to replace him out of loyalty?

Teams know much more about those things internally than outsiders do, but there comes a point where respect for invisible value becomes an excuse for ignoring visible performance.

The organization's preference for patience wasn't limited to personnel decisions. It showed up in the lineup, too.

Cito Gaston found success putting out largely the same lineup, day after day. The rosters he had might have been a bit more consistent than the 2025 squad, but maybe not.

John Schneider’s refusal to drop Guerrero in the lineup seemed at odds with his willingness to move everyone else around. Through late September, the first baseman carried a .260/.332/.356 line and only nine home runs across 609 plate appearances, good for a .688 OPS. His Statcast batting run value was minus-6. If he had been anyone else, he might have been batting sixth or seventh in the order.

Schneider is a player’s manager, and he seems to have a good sense of what his players need, but his loyalty to the idea that Vladdy would return to form seemed overly optimistic and misguided.

Guerrero's .331 xwOBA was considerably stronger than his actual results. His .280 xBA ranked in the 90th percentile. His 44.3 per cent hard-hit rate was in the 72nd percentile, his average bat speed in the 92nd percentile and his strikeout rate in the 92nd percentile.

Dropping Guerrero in the order might not have fixed him, but it would have acknowledged that a different strategy was at play.

It wasn’t just Guerrero's problem, either. As a team, the Jays grounded into the second-most double plays in baseball, with 129. The Athletics grounded into 130 double plays, while the Dodgers finished the regular season with 127. The difference between those teams and the Jays is that they consistently scored more runs.

Even in 2025, the Jays had periods when they didn’t score. Atkins has always structured his rosters with pitching and defence at the centre. An offence built on contact but without much slugging either finds other ways to generate runs or it doesn't. In 2026, Toronto didn't.

The Jays started the season with seven or eight viable starting pitchers and limped to the finish line with three or four at best. The bullpen was fantastic but overworked. A manager cannot rest his bullpen if his starters do not provide innings.

Loyalty can help build a clubhouse. Sentimentality can prevent a front office from changing it when necessary.

Being a franchise that values its players makes a difference when it comes to culture, but retaining players for that same rationale is a recipe for inconsistency.

Do the Jays tear it all down and start over? Uncertainty surrounding next season because of labour negotiations won’t help.

Do they try to re-sign Gausman? Do they pick up Myles Straw’s option? What do they decide to do with Anthony Santander? Can they get anything for Andrés Giménez in a trade?

A championship-calibre organization should celebrate its heroes. It just can't let those memories fill out tomorrow's lineup card or dictate today’s strategy.

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