The Blue Jays are in the midst of a thoroughly disappointing campaign, coming off a season in which they won the American League pennant, but a weak American League has Toronto firmly in the playoff picture. The Blue Jays (58-63) sit at the bottom of the American League East heading into Wednesday’s action, and were effectively sellers leading up to the Aug. 3 trade deadline - sending away veteran hurler Kevin Gausman and centre fielder Daulton Varsho in trades, but also acquiring starter Jose Soriano from the Los Angeles Angels. Anchored by an offence that ranks 29th in runs scored and home runs, and is dead last in on-base plus slugging percentage (.679), the Blue Jays have not produced nearly as much excitement as they did in 2025, when their season ended in extra innings in Game 7 of the World Series. However, a recent hot streak has kept the Blue Jays alive, and ESPN’s Buster Olney joined First Up on TSN1050 on Wednesday to discuss the competition in the AL and how their pitching may hold up the rest of the way. The Blue Jays have won five of their past seven games, leading to the question: at what point can Blue Jays fans start to believe in this team’s playoff chances again? “How about right now, like in this moment, because the American League stinks, and the teams that they’re chasing - they stink,” Olney said. “There’s no great teams in the hunt for this final wild-card spot.” The Texas Rangers own the final wild-card spot at 60-60 entering play on Wednesday, with the Jays sitting 2.5 games back. Four teams sit between the Rangers and Jays in the Detroit Tigers (59-60), Minnesota Twins (59-62), Baltimore Orioles (58-62) and Cleveland Guardians (58-62). “The front office of the Rangers, one of the teams battling with the Blue Jays, they didn’t believe in that team to the point that they almost traded away [star pitcher] Jacob deGrom to the Atlanta Braves,” Olney said. “The Detroit Tigers sold their two best starting pitchers at the deadline. “The Blue Jays, who before this run, generally speaking, have been a disappointment, can they contend with those teams? Absolutely.” Injury issues have started to pile up for the Blue Jays, presenting another potential issue. Starting pitcher Trey Yesavage had a minor knee surgery earlier this week, and while the team believes he may be able to return at some point, they have not set a timeline yet. “If you have a knee cleanup like that, you have to ramp back up,” Olney said of the situation with Yesavage. “At the most, if you’re the Blue Jays, you’re only going to get a handful of innings from him at the end of the year in the last two weeks.” The Blue Jays aren’t the only team in the hunt dealing with issues at this time of year, though. The Twins are missing All-Star outfielder Byron Buxton due to a hip injury, the Rangers just lost starter Nathan Eovaldi to an elbow injury, the Guardians have won just two of their past 10 games. “[The Blue Jays are] short across the board and guess what? So is every other team,” Olney explained. ”It may be kind of ugly, but if you treat it as a marathon, you look around at all the other runners and they’re all looking ugly.” The one ace in the hole that the Blue Jays have is a literal ace. Starting pitcher Dylan Cease has a sparkling 2.40 earned-run average with an American League-leading 191 strikeouts and an AL-best 4.9 wins above replacement, per Baseball-Reference. “Once every five days, [the Blue Jays] have arguably the second-best pitcher in the American League in Dylan Cease, and that’s an advantage the other teams don’t have,” said Olney. The Blue Jays’ best shot at contention, Olney thinks, is the level of production they can get from the starting rotation behind Cease. “Max Scherzer ... I don’t know what his plans are, he might not know what his plans are, but I know this - he probably wants to catch Justin Verlander for career strikeouts, he’s probably pretty driven as we go down the stretch, I think he wants to finish strong,” Olney said. “I think Soriano at least is going to give you innings, [Shane] Bieber is effectively playing for his next contract. “There’s a lot of reason to believe, given the experience of that group, that they can figure it out, but the context is the greater thing. It’s a race among a lot of mediocre teams. If you told me the Blue Jays were going to win the World Series I’d say ‘Come on!’ But if you told me they’d make the playoffs, that wouldn’t shock me given the field that they’re competing against.”
