Hatewatch the Throne

 

I have no one to blame but myself.

After several years, I let myself be alright with the Blue Jays. I was constantly aggravated by their sucking for two months, getting hot in June and then making an ALCS with teams I felt did not deserve it. 2015 and 2016 were agonizingly anticlimactic, and at the very least those Jays teams were thwarted by first a red-hot Royals team and then an even-stronger Guardians team. Then everybody left, the new youth movement shot up, they made some playoff arrangements on the strength of this organizational prowess, and I was cool with it. 

Which brings us to 2025. The year the Blue Jays sucked for two months, got really hot in June and took the AL East away from the plummeting Yankees despite having multiple problem areas and an even more piecemeal gameplay than the 2015 team. And honestly...sure. Why not at this point? Go nuts.

The most fascinating element of this Jays team is that some of the most integral performers on the team are guys who are A.) breaking out, and B.) older than the youth movement which has been underway for 6 years. Guys like Ernie Clement, Myles Straw, Tyler Heineman and Nathan Lukes [who just turned 31] are all providing the sort of wild spark that has propelled this team to the top. Clement is hitting .288 with 90 hits, and even if he's 29, he's the kind of guy that can stick around with Vlad and Bo. Even Eric Lauer, back from overseas, has been a success story, with a 2.78 ERA and a 4-2 record in 14 appearances. This team was hoping for a rotation to be built on the backs of guys like Bowden Francis and Alek Manoah, and that hasn't happened...and yet here they still are.

Also surprising is the fact that, while none of us were looking, the rotation trio of Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt and Jose Berrios has become commanding again. The ERAs may be high, but these guys have been hunkering down and providing stability. Berrios might have made the best progress of the three, with a 3.75 ERA in 20 starts. Gausman and Bassitt may strike more people out, but Berrios, around 10 or so years in, is still a very accurate, very reliable arm. 

This team is not perfect, and they just blew two games to the A's to end the first half. But they have this sort of uncontrollable spark that even the Yankees haven't been able to match. They still have 2 games over New York as the break reigns, and when they return, they'll have a series against the Giants before hosting the Yanks and settling this once and for all. It's just a matter of whether or not this team can keep its June leverage.