TORONTO — The hill is steep and tilted west.
Facing their first true adversity this postseason, the Blue Jays are flying to Seattle down 2-0 in the American League Championship Series after losing 10-3 in Game 2, fighting to keep their dream season alive after a nightmarish start to the series at home.
Now, somewhere in the air between Toronto and Seattle, they need to rediscover the identity that got them here as the top seed in the AL, a 94-win team that came into the ALCS with all the momentum in the world. The Blue Jays have earned the reputation of the comeback kids in 2025, their 49 comeback wins leading Major League Baseball, but it’s time to test that branding.
“I’m always going to have optimism about this team,” said manager John Schneider. “Looking at it as a whole, we’ve got to figure out ways to generate more offense. I give the guys a ton of credit for coming back, down three and we tied it, they just made more swings than us the last two games. That’s what it comes down to. We’ve got to find a way to limit damage and generate more offense.”
There’s nothing complicated about it. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., now 0-for-7 in the ALCS after tormenting the Yankees with a superstar performance in the ALDS, pointed a finger at himself.
“We need to get better offensively. For example, myself, I had a big at-bat and I couldn’t come through,” Guerrero said through club interpreter Hector Lebron. “That’s baseball. We need to go out there and win games.”
The Blue Jays need to find hope within their own clubhouse, because if they start looking around, the Mariners aren’t going to offer them any reasons to believe. Seattle is about to roll out George Kirby and Luis Castillo in Games 3 and 4 back home. They haven’t even bent in the ALCS, let alone break.
This entire Blue Jays season has been about beating the odds. Widely projected as a middle-of-the-road team coming into 2025, they’ve blown past every expectation, but this is their biggest challenge yet.
In postseason history, teams taking a 2-0 lead in any best-of-seven series have gone on to take that series 78 of 93 times (83.9%). In series with the current 2-3-2 format, teams winning both Games 1 and 2 on the road have prevailed in the series 24 of 27 times (88.9%). The last team to rally from a 2-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series was the D-backs against the Phillies in the 2023 NLCS, but the last team to do it after losing the first two games at home was the Yankees against the Braves in the 1996 World Series.
From the outside looking in, many will grasp for the expected numbers and equations that paint the Blue Jays as the better ballclub. When you speak to the Toronto players and coaching staff, though, those conversations keep coming back to something far simpler and more human. Over and over again, it comes back to the clubhouse. That, the Blue Jays believe, is their superpower.
“These guys don’t want the season to end, you know what I mean? Whatever the outcome is, I feel like these guys all want to get an Airbnb somewhere and hang out for the winter,” Schneider said. “I think that that means a lot. They have shown they’re really good at moving on to the next thing, which is hard to do. They’re very well-equipped to just say, ‘OK, what’s important now?’”
This clubhouse is what’s allowed rookies and fringe depth players to step in and become so much more. Yes, a few home runs from Guerrero are the easiest path to winning this series, but the likeliest path looks a lot different, demanding contributions from everyone.
“All of these guys have played a lot of baseball in this clubhouse,” said Trey Yesavage. “They’ve lost and they’ve won at a high level. It’s the way baseball works. I wouldn’t count this group out. This group is special.”
The message coming from the manager is simple: compete your tail off and do what you’ve always done. This isn’t the time for new ideas or surprise strategies. The Blue Jays came into the postseason as the No. 1 seed in the American League for a reason. A 162-game season is too long to allow flukes.
The Blue Jays understand their own mortality. Even Guerrero, still young in this game, has been eliminated from the postseason three times, each more painful than the last. This is the closest he’s gotten, though. Standing at his locker after the loss, he just kept repeating the same thing. It’s all that matters now.
“Go to Seattle and win games.”
