TORONTO -- There’s something dangerous about 26 ball players with nothing to lose.
Reports of the Blue Jays’ death have been greatly exaggerated. This team is alive again, breathing the oxygen of a depressed AL Wild Card race which has left the door cracked open for them. Which of these other contenders are truly undeniable? Why not the Blue Jays?
This team still needs an offensive outburst and desperately needs Vladimir Guerrero Jr., but these past two weeks have brought better days. Fresh off taking three of four from the Red Sox, the Blue Jays welcome the Yankees to town Friday night, sitting just two games behind the Rangers and Tigers for the final spot in the AL Wild Card race.
“Maybe the baseball gods are changing their minds about us,” manager John Schneider said.
The Blue Jays no longer seem content to leave their fate to the gods, though. That’s how it felt before the Trade Deadline, an organization stuck in the mud and unable to escape the long shadow of their 2025 run to Game 7 of the World Series against the Dodgers. Slowly and steadily, the season kept slipping away, each game feeling too similar to the last.
Something’s changed, though. This is part relief, with the Trade Deadline and its realities now behind the Blue Jays, and part acceptance. Sure, they’d rather be 20 games above .500 and taking another run at the division, but that’s not their current reality. The reality is that they begin a 39-game season Friday night at Rogers Centre against the Yankees, and they need to beat a handful of average AL contenders by a couple of games to make it a successful one. Why not?
“It’s been nice to feel the energy shift over the last week. Not just on the field, but in here with the guys, too,” Schneider said. “The bullpen knows we’re a full send. The lineup knows it’s the same way. We used the whole bench yesterday. We’re just going for it.”
Print the t-shirts now, “Full Send” plastered across a Blue Jays logo. If they can shock the baseball world and sneak into the postseason, you might find one of those shirts or towels draped on your seat in October.
Schneider is the right manager for this exact team in this exact spot. Grip it, rip it, send it and see what happens. If the Blue Jays take big hacks and it doesn’t work? So be it. If they try to take the extra base and get thrown out? Well, they weren’t in a postseason spot to begin with anyway. Throw punches until you hit the ground.
The veterans on this roster know how rare this is, some of them running out of opportunities to chase October. It’s addicting once you’ve tasted it.
“We’re right in this fight,” Max Scherzer said. “We’re in it. This is fun to be in this situation. Every game matters. Every start matters.”
Schneider’s job description feels so much different right now than it did a year ago. He’s batting rookies Charles McAdoo and Brett Bateman in the top two spots regularly, shuffling his lineup daily and trying to drag his struggling superstar, Guerrero, out of a career-worst slump. These are not the days for analytics and lineup optimization. Schneider needs energized, motivated ball players ready to run through a wall.
In the Blue Jays’ dugout, he’s cranked up the speakers connected to the stadium’s sound system. Most of the players didn’t even know those were in there, but suddenly, music is pumping right into the dugout at full volume, anything he can do to wrangle the energy and chaos of this building.
“I love music. It’s like the crowd. You can hear it, but if you can really hear it, that goes under that category of a ‘full send’,” Schneider said. “Like, let’s [freaking] go.”
Maybe that’s another t-shirt in a couple of months, but with a Blue Jays logo covering up a few letters.
This is all sitting right in front of the Blue Jays now. First, they need to survive the Yankees, the Rays and the Yankees once again in New York. After that, though? It’s a dream schedule.
The Blue Jays’ last 30 games, beginning Aug. 25 against the Royals, all come against teams with a record below .500, and many of them are involved in the AL Wild Card race. Every day will be moving day, especially if the Blue Jays can carry this momentum through the next 10 days against their division rivals.
Until then? Send it.