It was June 24 of last year when the Toronto Blue Jays reached a low point.

Their much-heralded rebuild in the post-José Bautista/Edwin Encarnación era, with their construction around a whole new generation of young players, had resulted in exactly six postseason games. Every single one of them was a loss, across three fruitless trips to the AL Wild Card Series.

The 2024 season was off to a miserable start, with a walk-off loss to the Red Sox, their seventh defeat in a row, dropping them to eight games under .500 and a whopping 16 games behind the first-place Yankees. It was beginning to look like the Blue Jays might just tear this whole thing down as the Trade Deadline approached. It even reached the point where Vladimir Guerrero Jr. gave an interview in which he softened his previousl

See Full Page