TORONTO — The dream season has its dream ending. The American League East belongs to the Blue Jays.
Flooding the field after Sunday’s 13-4 win over the Rays to clinch the division on the final day of the season, the Blue Jays were right where they expected to be all along. They were just the only ones who saw this coming.
Widely projected to be a team we’d all stop talking about in August when the season began, the Blue Jays now plow into October as the No. 1 seed in the AL with a legitimate shot at this organization’s first World Series since 1993, a title run that only a handful of these players were alive for. The Blue Jays have shocked the rest of baseball in ‘25, though, and for the first time in a decade, the division is theirs.
“There’s been a lot of ups and downs, losing, crying, happiness, but thank God, we did it this year,” Vladimir Guerrero Jr. said.
As the Blue Jays celebrated on the field, manager John Schneider stood with Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae for his on-field interview, while every fan in the stadium was still standing and cheering for their manager. When Schneider looked up, he saw his entire team standing right there, together, watching on from in front of the dugout. Even after the champagne celebration, the emotion was still clear in Schneider’s voice.
“These guys are my second family,” Schneider said. “You sacrifice time with your own family to be with these guys and have a common goal. I’ll never forget that. I love that Hazel called some guys out. It was really cool for me to take a mental picture of what was going on in front of the dugout.”
The Orioles and Rays? They walked the path many expected the Blue Jays to be on, disappointments in the same vein of this Blue Jays team a year ago. The Yankees and Red Sox? The longtime powerhouses in this division will now have to duke it out in the Wild Card Series to see which team takes a trip north to Toronto to begin the ALDS on Saturday.
In fact, as the No. 1 seed, the entire AL side of the postseason bracket will run through Toronto.
This city has spent a decade talking about those past teams, led by Jose Bautista and Josh Donaldson, dripping with edge and attitude. Now, it’s time for a new story, a new team we tell stories of.
“I do a lot in Toronto. I don’t stay in my house. I like to get out and I like to meet and talk to people from Canada, so I understand how much people still talk about the 2015 team,” said Kevin Gausman, who started the clincher. “Winning the division means a little bit more here. One team for an entire country is something that I didn’t really know when I signed up to come here, but man, it’s exciting. You can feel the love they have for the Blue Jays. Hopefully, we can make a run at this and they talk about our team even more than the 2015 team.”
The Blue Jays just pulled off the type of season that every team in baseball arrives for Spring Training whispering about.
Each year, as fresh bats are pulled from their plastic sleeves and cleats crunch on the pavement for the first time, managers and executives talk about seasons like this. They talk about seasons where internal improvements steal a few more wins than everyone else expects. They talk about bounce-back seasons from aging stars. They talk about chemistry and culture, two fluff words that rarely mean much a few weeks into the season. They talk about all of the ways in which this could be their year.
The Blue Jays just did it. They’ve done it all.
“This is a special group of guys,” said Bo Bichette. “They come to the field every single day to win, and a lot of guys in there make it fun to come in and go to war with each other, but also chill sometimes. This is a special moment.”
There are still miles to go for this team, which hasn’t won a playoff game since 2016, but it has a ticket to the dance now. Guerrero and Bichette still haven’t won a playoff game, either, but they’ve got this chance now, bigger and fuller of belief than ever before.
This home stretch hasn’t always featured the best of the Blue Jays, but it’s been enough. When this team is really rolling, it still feels like there’s some magic to them, this constant ability for the right people to make the right play at the right moment. Sunday, it was Alejandro Kirk, whose grand slam in the first inning will live on highlight reels for the rest of his career.
The Blue Jays just need a few more of these moments now. The AL East is theirs, the bye to the ALDS is theirs and the No. 1 seed in the American League is theirs. It’s all sitting in front of them, an opportunity that no one else saw coming.
