Blue Jays: The bandwagon is filling up again

The Blue Jays are one of baseball’s hottest teams, having won 8 of their last 9 and finished the month of May with a 18-10 record, bringing them just a game below the .500 mark.

As the Blue Jays struggled through April, the common theme was, “get back to .500 and go from there”. It’s hard to believe it, but the Blue Jays have are almost there, having closed the month of May sweeping the Cincinnati Reds and winning 8 of their last 9, bringing their record to 26-27.

The roster is finally (almost) healthy, as the offence has returned as a feared lineup in the American League, and the rotation is starting to get it’s bullets back as well. J.A. Happ returned to the mound on Tuesday evening and had a solid effort in his 4 innings, and Francisco Liriano is scheduled to pitch on Friday as well.

It’s all very encouraging to see, and especially for the a club that looked like they had written off their season in April. It’s not easy to come back from a 1-9 start, but the red-hot club has climbed to within 5.5 of the division leading Yankees, who they welcome for a 4 game set beginning on Thursday. If the Jays can continue their momentum into this series, things could look even better by the end of the week.

With the turn of fortunate in Toronto, the fans are back in full force, both at the Rogers Centre and on social media. As noted in the above tweet, the Blue Jays became the first team in the American League to surpass 1 million fans, and had over 44 thousand in the house for Wednesday’s early game. Those are signs of a healthy and excited fan base.

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And yet, just a few weeks ago many of the same fans felt the season was already over, beginning speculation on where and when Josh Donaldson, Marco Estrada and others would be traded, and how long the rebuild may take before the Blue Jays could return to relevancy. Admittedly, even we here at Jays Journal had a few articles along those lines.

Suddenly, all of that discussion is gone, and it’s been replaced with optimism and excitement. A few weeks ago, when the Nationals reportedly inquired about Roberto Osuna‘s availability, I actually read a few tweets that said things like, “trade him now and kickstart the rebuild”, and “move him while he’s still got value”. Now, I come across #OsunaMatata every half dozen tweets or so, and that’s more than okay by me.

Gone is the speculation about what Donaldson could fetch in a trade, and now fans are beginning to dream about trade acquisitions that could push their club into the World Series, after having been eliminated in the ALCS for the past two seasons. Wednesday’s game will be their 54th, the official 1/3 mark of the season, and an opportunity to hit .500 for the first time this season.

Despite still sitting in last in the AL East, the Blue Jays are only 2 games out of a Wild Card spot, and have all kinds of time to make up the difference, now that they’ve gone on this recent hot streak. As it turns out, many of us (admittedly, myself included to a certain degree) were a little too quick to write this team off.

Next: Blue Jays: Should Sanchez go back to the bullpen?

I considered embedding some tweets to show how many fans lost their minds in April, but instead let’s just make room for everyone on the bandwagon, old, new, and even the fair-weather. The Blue Jays are back, and as far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier.