Blue Jays: Grading the first quarter of the season

Somehow a quarter of the Blue Jays season has already come and gone. 42 games into the year, the team is 23-19 and sitting two and a half games out of first place in the American League East, despite being in fourth place.

With a top-10 offence in baseball and a pitching staff that has exceeded expectations so far, the Jays have put themselves in position to make a run at back-to-back playoff births and a division title.

According to ESPN, the Blue Jays have had the fourth most difficult schedule to date. This should set them up with the opportunity to keep up their winning ways against weaker competition.

To this point, we haven’t seen a full-strength Jays team, and despite seeing players move in and out of the lineup due to injury — including prized free-agent signing George Springer — they have held their own in the best division in baseball.

This makes it hard to project what the team may look like come September and October, but hopefully means once the team returns to full strength, they can separate themselves in the AL East and insert themselves squarely into the World Series picture.

Here we are going to give each Jays positional group a grade for their first quarter performance.