Blue Jays: The odds are stacked in the new super-east division

While it’s certainly great to have the prospect of a return of baseball next month, the Blue Jays are going to have the odds stacked against them.

We’re about to embark on an unprecedented year of big league baseball, and while it’s going to be strange in a lot of ways, it should be highly entertaining. That said, some of the new circumstances don’t exactly work in the Blue Jays’ favour.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how some of the proposed rule changes might actually help them, but unfortunately stuff like an expanded playoff didn’t come to fruition. What did change was the way that divisions are structured, and for the Blue Jays it made a difficult situation a little bit worse.

They’ve already working from behind compared to a few other teams around the league, based purely on being in the American League East. It’s always been a difficult division with high-spending teams like the Yankees and Red Sox, and the perpetually competitive Tampa Bay Rays. The Orioles are terrible right now, but they’ve had plenty of solid stretches over the last couple of decades as well.

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Now that the AL East will be combined with the NL East, the Blue Jays aren’t exactly getting a break. In fact, four of the team teams from the NL East finished with .500 or better records in 2019, and there’s a good chance that each of them could have improved. Here’s how they stacked up last season:

Braves:        97-65
Nationals:   93-69
Mets:            86-76
Phillies:        81-81
Marlins:       57-105

Other than the Marlins, there are no easy games to play against that group. The Nationals are coming off of a World Series title, and while that can sometimes come with a bit of a “hangover” after a long and intense post-season run, the veteran squad has had a few extra months to recover and that could be a very significant thing. The Braves are arguably one of the scariest teams in baseball right now, and in a normal season I might even pick them as my early favourite. The Mets should continue to improve, and the Phillies will look to take another step in the right direction in year two of Bryce Harper’s mega-contract.

Until the Blue Jays know where they’re going to be hosting their home games, it’s very difficult for the league to set a formal schedule. That said, they should have some answers within the next couple of days here, and that will provide a lot more clarity. For now we know that they’ll play 10 games each against their AL East division rivals, and the remaining 20 will be played against the NL East opponents.

While the bulk of the work will still have to be done against the usual suspects from the AL East, this new super-division probably isn’t going to help the Blue Jays’ cause. Then again, when the season is just 60 games and you think about how the Nationals were 19-31 last year at one point, who knows what could happen.