Blue Jays week in review: the good, the bad, the noteworthy for September 8

Opportunity wasted. The Toronto Blue Jays went into arguably their biggest road trip of the season and squandered and excellent chance to create some separation between themselves and the rest of the AL East. While the Red Sox struggled with the Diamondbacks in their series in Arizona, the Blue Jays went 3-3 on the week, dropping two winnable games against the Yankees in New York.

While they end the week with a record of 82-61 and sit two games ahead of the Bronx Bombers in the division, the Blue Jays have left a number of significant wins on the table over the last few weeks while the Yankees have been doing just enough to keep things close. Since the beginning of August, Toronto is 18-15, while the Yankees are 20-14. At the very least, the Blue Jays weren't swept and there were some other positives to take out of the last week of games.

The good: they were in all six games

The Blue Jays lost a 5-4 game in extra innings to begin the week in Cincinnati before winning the next two slugfest matchups by a combined score of 25-18. They also lost back-to-back games in New York 3-1 and 4-3. In the three loses the Blue Jays only allowed 12 runs while they scored eight.

None of these losses came because the Blue Jays couldn't hang with the other team. While they were frustrating games due to the lack of a big hit in an important moment, the fact is in all three games they were just one at-bat away from changing the outcome. And when the bats did come through, they came through in massive waves. They hit ten home runs in the three games they won and they have hit 91 home runs as a team since June 30 - the fourth most in the league in that span.

The bad: Not getting those big hits

For a team that has been so good at driving in runs with runners in scoring position this season, that specific attribute was missing in their final two losses to the Yankees. The Blue Jays went a combined 3-22 in that exact situation. An unfortunate result considering the Blue Jays have an MLB best .287 batting average and the third lowest strikeouts (258) with RISP. In fact this entire week was a bit uncharacteristic for the Blue Jays and their strikeout numbers.

The Blue Jays struck out 45 times in their six games this week, including back to back games with double digits in that category. They were K'd 10 times versus the Reds on Tuesday and 11 times in that series finale on Wednesday. They also whiffed in some big at-bats during the Yankees series that could have changed the outcome for Toronto. The Blue Jays still have the least strikeouts overall on the season with 966, but this week was a trend in the wrong direction.

The noteworthy: The Blue Jays have officially beat preseason predictions

Most pre-season predictions had the Blue Jays finishing the year at 81 wins at best. Toronto finish the week at 82 wins, surpassing even the most optimistic "experts" picks and have a better than 95% chance of making the playoffs. Sure, it would be much more satisfying at this point to lock up their first division title in ten years, but everything from this point should just feel like gravy.

Seven months ago, the Blue Jays were a team that had finished in last place of the AL East just one year ago. Their two best players in a generation were on the verge of hitting free agency and they spent most of the winter pursuing big name players and only manage to wrangle in one to boost the lineup (Anthony Santander). GM Ross Atkins believed in the core, stating in November that the current makeup was at least ten wins better than they played in 2024 when they had 74 wins.

Toronto are two off the mark from making that prediction a reality as well.

On deck: Hosting the Astros and the Orioles

It's two tough matchups for two very different reasons. Toronto comes home to begin a three game series against the Astros on Tuesday - a team that is very much trying to keep their hopes alive of locking down the AL West. Toronto are 0-3 against Houston this season, the only team within the current playoff picture which the Blue Jays don't hold the upper hand on via the tiebreaker rules.

It really only matters if the Blue Jays and the Astros finish with identical records for one of the two first-round byes, but you never want to leave that up to chance and it would be a shame for the Blue Jays to have to play in the Wild Card series due to their regular season play against Houston.

The Blue Jays home stand continues against another team in which they are sub-.500 against the season, the Orioles. Toronto is 4-6 against their division rivals who have the fourth worst record in the American League.