Ranking the 5 biggest culprits that deserve the most blame for Blue Jays’ awful start

Entering the 2024 MLB season, many were looking forward to another year of exciting and competitive baseball by the Toronto Blue Jays. That was because during the 2023-24 offseason, the Jays had made various moves to help retool and augment their roster for the year ahead. Having made the postseason in each of the past couple of seasons, the Jays were aiming to make it three in a row with respect to another playoff appearance and their fourth in five years. 

However, things surely have not gone as planned. In fact, the Jays have been off to an awful start, as they currently hold a miserable record of 28-32 and have never won more than four consecutive games this season. On top of that, they are occupying last place in the ultra-competitive AL East, a whopping 14 games behind the division-leading New York Yankees. Not to mention that they are another 5 games out of the third and final Wild Card spot behind a boatload of teams. Each day that goes by, these defecits grow larger and larger.

So who is to blame for the underwhelming season produced by the team thus far? Has it been because of one person, a group of players, or an entire collective as a whole?

To find out, we will take a look at some of the main culprits responsible for the Jays’ suboptimal performance to date. Each culprit has played a role in contributing to the team’s failure so far, but with varying degrees of impact. As a result, to help differentiate the severity of the impact, we will be incorporating an arbitrary “Blame Score” rating where each culprit will be graded on a scale of 1-10 where a score of 1 represents the least blame and a score of 10 represents the most to blame.