Blue Jays: How much the story can change in just 60 games

One of the best parts of offseason is dreaming on projections, especially when your favourite team has high-end potential. For Blue Jays fans, it was hard not to get excited about the team’s chances in 2021, especially after a return to the playoffs in 2020 for the talented young roster.

Entering a fresh season and one that would be the typical 162 games, there were plenty of expectations for the Blue Jays this year because of that young core, but also because the front office spent more than most of the league in free agency by signing the likes of George Springer, Marcus Semien, and more. Most baseball pundits projected them to have one of the better offences in baseball, and that the pitching staff would be the weakness.

That’s turned out to be true to a certain extent, but there have been a lot of variables at play, especially the health of the pitchers, especially in the bullpen. That said, there have been plenty of pleasant surprises as well, and if the Jays can ever get healthy in that department they might have a pretty impressive group.

Looking at the 26-man roster, one thing that stands out to me that is that the overall results have been pretty close to what we might have expected, but several individual performances have been much different than projected. In some cases that’s obviously been for the better, and in others there have been some major disappointments.

The good news is that the Jays still have 102 games left to write the narrative of their 2021 season as a team. Individually, I’m fascinated by how much the story has changed for several Blue Jays.

Allow me to explain what I mean.