Sprinkles of wisdom that have defined Toronto's wild 2025 ride

TORONTO -- It’s easy to forget the team we all expected the Blue Jays to be.

Widely projected as a team that would land somewhere in the range of “.500 and uneventful”, the Blue Jays have been one of baseball’s biggest surprises. Now sitting comfortably as the No. 1 seed in the ALDS, waiting for either the Red Sox or Yankees to come join them, the Blue Jays have shaken every expectation, every doubt, every bad idea.

Roughly 270 days ago, the gates of the Blue Jays’ player development complex slid open to the media for the first time. There have been a thousand interviews since then, probably more. These are the quotes that define the 2025 Blue Jays and where they’re going.

“I’ve quietly got a really good [freaking] feeling about this team. Seriously.”
-- John Schneider, early March

Spring Training is long. By those dreary days in the middle, most days are spent wandering from field to field at the Blue Jays’ complex, catching 10 minutes of batting practice here, maybe a starter throwing a simulated inning over there.

One day, between fields, I stopped to talk with John Schneider. It’s likelier that we were discussing my Wawa order that morning than baseball itself, but midway through, Schneider stopped and his tone changed. Every manager I’ve covered and half of their players have said something about “having a good feeling,” but Schneider’s had the most conviction I’d heard before. It was genuine.

Since then, we’ve seen Schneider become a candidate to win AL Manager of the Year, perhaps even a favorite. The Schneider who sat on the podium in Minneapolis two years ago, shellshocked after the Blue Jays lifted José Berríos for Yusei Kikuchi? He’s gone now.

As camp wrapped in late March, I wrote about seeing the true Schneider come out, one who was ready to let it rip. He has, and he will.

“Actually, I feel great.”
-- George Springer, March 18

Springer was coming off an awful 2024 season, and late in spring, it looked even worse. Springer hit just .104 in Spring Training, so on a scorching-hot afternoon in Sarasota, I pulled Springer aside to talk about it. Frankly, at the time, it felt like we were headed towards some extremely uncomfortable conversations about Springer by mid-season.

Springer’s “actually, I feel great” stunned me at the time. He spoke about a “mechanical thing” he was working on and how excited he was about some changes to his “process.” It sounded like the same Spring Training fluff we hear every year. In hindsight? He knew exactly what he was talking about.

“I am home.”
-- Vladimir Guerrero Jr., April 9

Remember Feb. 18? Guerrero, still unsigned, stepped in front of the microphone on the day of his self-imposed deadline and answered the big question with one word: “No.”

“They expressed what they had. I expressed what I had. I’m here, and we didn’t get an agreement. Now, they’re going to have to compete with 29 more teams,” Guerrero said that day.

Would this season still have had the same magic with this hanging over the Blue Jays? Even if it did, imagine the threat now of both Guerrero and Bo Bichette being potentially days away from their last games with the organization. His extension in early April was one of the biggest moments in this organization’s history.

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“If we’re winning, I’m hot.”
-- Vladimir Guerrero Jr., July 25

This has not been an MVP season for Guerrero, which is still the standard he’s held to. It’s been good -- perhaps even very good -- but not truly great. In these cold spells, though, he’s still faced the cameras plenty and his finest quote of the season came in late July.

This, more than any, captures the 2025 Blue Jays. For all the talk about “these guys only care about one thing … and it’s winning,” it means something more when it comes from the $500-million man.

“This is what I remember watching on TV when I was 17 years old at home, with Bautista and Donaldson.”
-- Bo Bichette, July 21

Soon after Bichette said this in July, I wrote: When Bo Bichette speaks, listen to him.

Bichette isn’t going to paint the whole picture for you, but the little he does say matters. Bichette has said, over and over, that he values playing his career with one organization. He’s said, over and over, that he wants to do that with Vladdy.

In Bichette’s own words, he wants “… to win, to be part of an organization that has that same goal in mind and I want to play in an exciting environment.”

The Blue Jays are checking every box. Now, it’s time for Bichette to have his own moment that will be remembered, just like Bautista and Donaldson. Listen to him.