In The Loaded AL East, The Blue Jays Must Choose Their Path Forward

Welcome to Jays Centre, everyone! It's just Day One of what will be a long process as we rebrand and expand the site, but we're all very excited to be a part of this community. Speaking personally, I've followed the team closely since 2010, and I remember those Adam Lind-Vernon Wells-Ricky Romero teams as fondly as any squad the Blue Jays have trotted out since. I hope you're as jazzed as we are to get going here — here's to a great 2025!

It's my first article here, so I'll cut right to the chase on this one: the Blue Jays haven't won a playoff game since 2016. They're 0-6 in the AL Wild Card round since 2020 (appearing in 2020, 2022, and 2023). And the real kicker: they haven't won the division since 2015, despite winning 89 or more games four times since then.

Such is life playing in the gauntlet that is the AL East, where the endlessly-pocketed Yankees reside. It's also where the perennially overachieving Rays, upstart Orioles, and rapidly improving Red Sox call home. Sure, if the Blue Jays had the privilege of playing in, say, the NL Central, where the only real competition is the half-heartedly-trying Chicago Cubs and cost-cutting Milwaukee Brewers, they could get away with an offseason where their biggest move was trading Spencer Horwitz (and Nick Mitchell) for Andres Giménéz (and Nick Sandlin). 

We all know what awaits the Blue Jays in the next year or two. A lot of this core that was once young is now getting old if they aren't already there. George Springer, Kevin Gausman, and Chris Bassitt are all in their mid-30s and due for free agency after 2025 or 2026. Bo Bichette is only 26, but he's gone after next season, too. The same, of course, is true for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who promises to be one of the best free agents on the market next offseason if he makes it there. Toronto currently has just two players on its major league payroll that are pre-arbitration: 28-year-old Bowden Francis and Davis Schneider, who hit .191 in nearly 400 at-bats last year. 

If that sounds like I'm painting a bit of a grim picture, that's because I am. This core has felt so close to breaking through for so long and is now expiring.

A lot of the stories written about the Blue Jays over the last few offseasons are how they continue to finish "just behind" the winners of the big free agency sweepstakes. They lost out on Shohei Ohtani after a commendable effort; they "impressed' Juan Soto in meetings; they offered more money to Corbin Burnes than the Diamondbacks; these stories are as frustrating as they are repetitious. The two big-name free agents the Blue Jays have landed with this Bichette-Guerrero core in place were Springer (prior to the 2021 season) and Gausman (after the 2021 season). Sure, they've supplemented them with players like Bassitt (via free agency) and José Berrios (via trade, then extension), but they never really developed the rest of the team beyond a couple of key role players like Alejandro Kirk and those 15 minutes when Alek Manoah was good.

It's an adage in sports, but the worst place to be is caught in the middle — too good to lose, but not good enough to win. The Blue Jays can (and will) ride this thing out into the beginning of the 2025 season, and there's a better-than-you-may-think chance that they can turn things around from a dismal 2024 with some better health and a few more additions like Giménez. But the mediocrity treadmill is no place for a franchise that's supposed to be taking itself seriously.

If the team wants to extend Guerrero Jr., and it's willing to pay that $450+ million price tag, then it better look long and hard in the mirror about what it will take to build around him for the next decade. If it decides it's not worth the trouble and it's time to blow the whole thing up again, they better get prepared to hunker down for awhile because the farm system isn't anything to write home about, and the AL East is only getting tougher. Either way, they have to choose, and they have to do so quickly. Letting the last remnants of that once-tantalizing core walk away for nothing won't get them anything but a ticket to the bottom of the division for the foreseeable future.