What went wrong for the Blue Jays

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has had a miserable year at the plate, hitting just nine home runs after belting eight in the 2025 playoffs alone. (Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)Social SharingThe Toronto Blue Jays were officially eliminated from playoff contention yesterday with a 4-2 defeat in the first game of a doubleheader in Baltimore. That put the Chicago White Sox out of Toronto's reach in the chase for the last available wild-card spot in the American League.

After losing the nightcap by the same score, the Jays (77-82) return home for a season-ending three-game series against Cincinnati knowing they'll finish at least two games below .500. That's a bitter pill for the reigning American League champions to swallow after they pushed the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers to extra innings in Game 7 of the World Series, which they easily could have won if just one of several bad breaks had instead gone their way.

Well, how long do you have? Here's a (by no means exhaustive) list of things that brought down the Jays this year.

Show me an underachieving team, and I'll show you a crowded trainer's room. 

The 2026 Blue Jays were no exception as, by Sportsnet's count, 28 Toronto players landed on the injured list this season. The pitching rotation was especially hard-hit, with Jose Berrios and Cody Ponce missing all but one start combined, 2025 playoff sensation Trey Yesavage out for long stretches due to shoulder and knee injuries, and arm problems limiting Shane Bieber to 11 (mostly ineffective) appearances.

Big-ticket free-agent acquisition Dylan Cease proved worthy of his seven-year, $210M contract, turning in a Cy Young-calibre season while inheriting the ace role from Kevin Gausman, who was traded to the Cubs in August. But the injury bug eventually bit him too: Cease was placed on the IL yesterday with shoulder inflammation after the AL leader in strikeout rate experienced a steady decline in his fastball velocity as the season wore on. Thankfully, it appears he won't need surgery.

The everyday lineup got banged up as well, with 2025 Jays home-run leader George Springer (broken toe) and catcher Alejandro Kirk (broken thumb) missing multiple weeks while promising outfielder Addison Barger sprained both his ankles in April and played only nine games before an elbow injury ended his season. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. sat out a week due to a concussion and dealt with various bumps and bruises during a truly awful season for the Jays' franchise player (more on that later).

Bill James, the legendary baseball statistician, coined this term to describe the tendency of teams who dramatically improve in one season to decline the following year. It works the other way too, as teams who experience a sharp decline tend to bounce back. "Regression to the mean" is another name for this phenomenon.

Whatever you call it, the Blue Jays were a prime candidate to come back to earth after improving by 20 wins to capture their first AL East title in a decade and then embarking on that magical run to their first World Series since 1993. The Jays ran extremely hot throughout the playoffs last year — right until they didn't in the final two games of the World Series with the title within their grasp.

Sure enough, the Jays are on pace for probably 78 or 79 wins this season — closer to the 74 they posted in 2024 than the 94 they racked up last year.

So, how exactly did the Jays regress?

Not on the mound, surprisingly. Despite all the injuries, Toronto's pitching actually held up pretty well: the Jays rank ninth in the majors with a 3.92 team ERA. Last season, they were 19th at 4.19.

The Jays still don't strike out much, which was one of their calling cards last year. In fact, they've once again whiffed the second-fewest times in the entire majors, trailing only AL East-winning Tampa Bay. And, despite losing two-time AL hits leader Bo Bichette to the Mets in free agency, they're still pretty good at hitting for average: Toronto ranks eighth in the majors at .248, though that's a dip from their big-league-leading .265 mark in 2025.

But if Bill James and his disciples taught us old-school baseball fans anything, it's that on-base percentage matters way more than batting average. And the Blue Jays stopped getting on base this year, plummeting from No. 1 in the majors in 2025 with a .333 OBP all the way down to a three-way tie for 26th at a .310.

Worse, they combined that with a staggering lack of pop. The Jays rank dead last in home runs with 150 (they tied for 11th last year with 191) and 26th in slugging percentage at .382 (they tied for seventh with a .427 mark in 2025). As a result, Toronto sits 29th out of 30 teams in the majors in runs scored after finishing fourth in that department last year.

Now we must address the nine-home-run elephant in the room.

Blame for the Blue Jays' power outage can certainly be spread around, but Guerrero is the prime culprit. It's almost inconceivable that the same guy who blasted eight home runs in just 18 post-season games last year has not even reached double digits in 142 games and took until mid-September to finally hit his first (and still only) home-stadium homer. Heading into the final three games of the season, the face of the franchise is tied for fifth on the team in homers and has the exact same amount as Andres Gimenez, a 161-pound shortstop whose specialty is defence.

And it's not like Guerrero is smacking a ton of pitches off the wall or racking up extra-base hits. His .360 slugging percentage is by far the lowest of his career and a whopping 118 points off his career mark. Meanwhile, his batting average (.263) and on-base percentage (.335) are lower than anything he's posted in a season besides Covid-shortened 2020, when the Blue Jays played most of their home games in a minor-league stadium in Buffalo.

'I never felt the pressure': Guerrero Jr. finally hits first homer of season at Rogers Centre in win over Os

Guerrero built up a lot of goodwill during last year's playoff run, where he tied the great Shohei Ohtani for the post-season lead in homers while batting an absurd .397 with a .494 OBP and .795 slugging percentage and playing outstanding defence at first. Moreover, he delighted millions of Jays fans from coast to coast with his joyous-yet-fiery personality and unwavering support for his teammates while proudly embracing his Canadian roots (the Dominican national was born in Montreal while his Hall of Fame father, Vladimir Sr., was playing for the Expos).

Unfortunately, Vladdy is squandering those good vibes right now — and not just with his anemic performance at the plate.

In a recent interview with a Spanish-language reporter, Guerrero was asked about his struggles in the first year of the 14-year, $500-million US contract extension he signed in April 2025. Rather than admit he didn't live up to his paycheque this season, Guerrero suggested he was being paid for what he had done in the past, not what he was expected to do in the future. "The money they gave me wasn't for what I'm going to do. It was for what I already did," he said. "They didn't pay me because I'm going to hit 40 [home runs] every year. They paid me for what I already accomplished."

Perhaps something was lost in translation. But Guerrero stood by his comments after the Jays were eliminated yesterday. "No, I don't regret myself. I'm not lying with what I say,” Guerrero said through an interpreter. “I understand some fans, they don't understand the way and what I was trying to say specifically, but what I said is the way I feel."

It's been a long and frustrating year for everyone, so maybe Guerrero deserves a pass here. But, after a season that began with such great expectations and ended in crushing disappointment, Jays fans might not be so forgiving if the team — and its best player — don't turn things around next year.

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