Toronto Blue Jays: The familiar faces in the NL East

As the Blue Jays embark on a short season, they’ll also join a new super-division with the NL East. Which familiar faces are we bound to see this year?

If the 2020 season had gone according to plan, the Blue Jays would not be seeing NL East teams with the exception of the Philadelphia Phillies, who they play every even calendar year. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, changes were needed to all aspects of the game, which included the schedule. It’s looking like the Blue Jays may in fact be doing their spring training and playing their home games in Toronto, but that has yet to be confirmed as of this writing. 

With the yet to be released schedule consisting of 60 games, they will play 40 of them against their AL East counterparts and 20 games against teams in the NL East, with six of those games coming against the Phillies. It’s not yet known how the games against the other NL East teams will be divided up, but we know that they’ll play 10 games against each of their division rivals in the AL East. Our own Chris Henderson recently wrote about the new “super-division”, and how it likely won’t help the Blue Jays’ chances. That said, it’s going to be a strange and unprecedented year of baseball.

As the purpose of playing NL East teams is to reduce travel, some players they will see are former members of Canada’s team, while others were faces that they often played against as members of the Red Sox, Yankees, Rays, and Orioles. Here are players from each NL East team that are familiar to the Blue Jays and their fans.