TORONTO -- One year ago, the rest of baseball was looking up at the Blue Jays, wondering how they could steal their magic and make it their own.
It’s a copycat league, but aren’t they all copycat leagues? When something works, rivals rush to repeat it, and since the Dodgers seemed to exist in another realm entirely, the Blue Jays felt so much more achievable.
That’s a dangerous game, though. The Blue Jays didn’t land within a thousand miles of their own 2025 identity, and now they’re back on the ground with everyone else, looking up at the Rays and Brewers. There are some similarities between the ‘26 World Series teams and what Toronto nearly pulled off a year ago, and if the club is going to climb that mountain again, it’ll need to learn from it.
This is what the Blue Jays can take from the Rays and Brewers, which highlights just how wide a gap they’ll need to close between now and the 2027 season:
1. An ability to win in different ways
The 2025 Blue Jays nailed this. In ‘26, it felt like their best shot at winning was to hit 17 singles in a row. That’s not happening.
This is where a comparison to the Brewers is especially useful. The Blue Jays ranked dead last in MLB this season with just 152 home runs hit, but the Brewers were second to last with just 154. Milwaukee did more with its contact on balls in play, but that can have some luck baked into it year to year. How, then, could these two homer-avoidant teams walk such different paths?
Look at the walks.
The Brewers ranked second in the Majors with 668, the Blue Jays second to last at 459. That’s a difference of whopping 209 free baserunners over the course of a season. That leads to extended innings, higher pitch counts and more opportunities for the opposing pitcher to make a mistake. Over the course of a season, that adds up to a few wins. That’s all the Blue Jays needed in a depleted AL Wild Card race, too … a few wins!
That’s what got the Brewers to 103 wins. What’s gotten them to the World Series, though, including an incredible sweep of the two-time defending champion Dodgers, has been their ability to turn the power on when they need it. The postseason is full of dominant pitching, making it harder to string hits together. The Brewers have responded by launching 11 home runs in their first 10 postseason games, showing a rare ability to flip the switch and change their identity as an offense. The Blue Jays’ offense, at least in 2026, was extremely one-dimensional.
2. Danger on the bases
Toronto sounds like an organization now obsessed with improving its baserunning, a theme that should stretch throughout the offseason and impact its decisions.
You won’t be surprised, then, to see how well the Brewers and Rays run the bases. They’re each in the top five when it comes to stolen bases, with the Brewers (162) and Rays (164) both more than doubling the Blue Jays (75). Again, just like the walk totals, those add up a few better innings, a few extra runs and a few extra wins. This is all incremental, but it adds up over 162 games.
More advanced baserunning metrics show the same. By using Statcast’s baserunning runs, a metric designed to express the overall value of a baserunner, the Brewers (+9) and Rays (+4) both ranked in the top 10 while the Blue Jays (-3) tied for 19th and lacked true, game-changing runners.
3. Pitching development
One Trey Yesavage is great. Two or three of him? That’s when it starts to get fun.
The Blue Jays have taken some very encouraging strides on that front in recent years and you’re about to see those waves coming each year, but the Rays and Brewers set a high bar. This isn’t just about the headliners like Jacob Misiorowski, but also about the development that takes place in the big leagues. The Rays nail this part of the game with pitchers like Drew Rasmussen, who’s long been great for Tampa Bay since he was acquired, and Freddy Peralta, who rediscovered himself late this year after a Deadline deal from the Mets.
The Blue Jays need their next big pitching development story. Their top pick in 2026 and No. 4 prospect, Cole Carlon, is a fine place to start, along with Johnny King (No. 3) and Dasan Hill (No. 7), all three of them lefties. If Toronto can develop another front-end starter, that not only gives the team immediate wins, it frees up necessary payroll to improve this offense long term.