The Toronto Blue Jays enter Tuesday’s series against the Kansas City Royals two games out of the final wild-card spot in the American League after staying idle with an off day on Monday.
Two teams the Blue Jays trail in the hunt - the Cleveland Guardians and Texas Rangers - picked up big wins in Monday’s action, with the Minnesota Twins and Seattle Mariners also picking up victories to stay in the chase.
With just 30 games left on the schedule and sitting at 64-68, the time for scoreboard watching in Toronto has begun - but as ESPN’s Buster Olney says, it may ultimately come down to how well the Blue Jays can finish out their season, rather than the fortunes of their competitors.
Olney joined First Up on TSN1050 on Tuesday morning to discuss the AL playoff picture, the upcoming series against the Royals and the outlook for the remainder of the season.
“Either 18-12 or 17-13, that’s what you have to do this last month to get back into the mix, and that’s certainly not out of the question,” Olney said, when asked how well the Blue Jays need to do in order to take the final wild-card slot in the AL.
“I was mentioning last week that this feels like the race for the third wild card in the American League feels like a random flipping of the coin with all of these teams because there is such mediocrity.”
The New York Yankees (74-56) and Boston Red Sox (72-59) are almost locked into the top two wild-card slots in the AL, but it’s a crowded race behind them for the final spot. The Guardians lead the way at 66-66, with five teams sitting within three games of them for that spot.
| Team | Record | Games back | Games remaining |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLE | 66-66 | - | 30 |
| HOU | 65-66 | 0.5 | 31 |
| MIN | 64-68 | 2.0 | 30 |
| TOR | 64-68 | 2.0 | 30 |
| BAL | 63-68 | 2.5 | 31 |
| SEA | 63-69 | 3.0 | 30 |
“There’s a real chance that the third wild card in the American League will be a sub-.500 team,” Olney said. “In the history of baseball, no team has made the playoffs with an under-.500 record. Anybody who’s trying to handicap this and says ‘well, this team’s strengths, this team’s weaknesses,’ forget it, because they’re all really flawed teams.”
The Blue Jays own the best record of any of the six teams in contention in the month of August (13-9), including big series wins over the Yankees, Red Sox and AL-leading Tampa Bay Rays. Toronto is not currently scheduled to play another team over .500 through the remainder of the season, with many of their upcoming opponents teams that are in the thick of the wild-card race.
Their next opponent, the Royals, enter the series at 58-74 - but they have won eight straight.
“So much of the baseball schedule comes down to when you catch a team, and they’re not catching the Royals at the right time,” Olney said.
The Royals are scheduled to send Seth Lugo to the mound to start the first game of the series, followed by Randy Dobnak and Noah Cameron in the finale on Thursday.
“Cameron has been excellent his [past] five starts, he’s been calling his own pitches and he’s been dominant on the mound,” Olney said of the 27-year-old lefty who has a stunning 1.26 earned-run average over 35.2 innings in his past five starts. “So the timing of [this series] could certainly be better if you’re the Blue Jays.”
In these spots late in the season, when a team is trying to climb into a playoff spot, it’s easy to focus solely on the teams ahead of them in the standings, but Olney is especially concerned about one of the team behind the Jays in the pecking order right now - the Mariners.
“Last night, some of the developments (the Guardians, Rangers and Twins winning) for the Blue Jays weren’t great, but I think maybe the scariest development [was Mariners catcher] Cal Raleigh hitting three home runs. Did he just wake up?” Olney said.
“All year we’ve been watching him and [Blue Jays slugger] Vladimir Guerrero Jr. really struggle, Raleigh has a huge night last night, and I’ve said before that the Mariners are really looked at by rival executives as being the sleeping giant in the American League. I’m wondering if what Cal Raleigh did last night is a sign of things to come here in the last month.”
Raleigh has been brutal this season following up a campaign in which he hit 60 home runs - a major-league record for a catcher - and finished second in AL Most Valuable Player voting, hitting just .167 with an on-base plus slugging percentage of .618. His struggles at the plate are a big part of why the Mariners rank second-last in the majors in runs scored (522), just one ahead of the Blue Jays.
“I don’t know if you saw the highlights, but [Raleigh] just looked so relieved,” Olney said. “I suspect that if Vladdy had a day like that now, you’d see the same from him. There would be that ‘Oh my God, I still have it in me.’ Imagine the response if Vladdy hit three home runs in a home game, based on how the year has gone.”
Guerrero has still not hit a home run in the Rogers Centre as his inexplicable season continues. He has just seven home runs on the year and a .688 OPS - by far the lowest mark for a single season in his career.
Olney has a theory for why the American League seems likely to have a sub-.500 team qualify for the postseason for the first time in MLB history: “Blame the [Los Angeles] Dodgers.”
“We saw this in the early ‘00s, with the Yankees and the Red Sox. The Yankees were the early dynasty team, then the Red Sox with [general manager] Theo Epstein, they come on board and it became an arms race between those two teams and there was a general shift in talent from the National League to the American League during that time.
“What’s happened in recent years is the Dodgers have gotten better so you see teams like [the] San Diego [Padres], like [the] Philadelphia [Phillies] load up trying to keep up with the Dodgers. So there’s been a shift of talent from the AL to the NL. Early in the year, in the first weeks, evaluators, general managers even of teams in the AL were like ‘man, our league sucks.’”
Just three teams in the AL enter play on Tuesday with more than 70 wins - the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays (78-53). The final wild-card slot in the AL belongs to the 66-66 Guardians.
On the NL side, there are six teams with more than 70 wins, and the 71-61 Padres own the final wild-card spot.
“In a short series you still have hope - the Blue Jays demonstrated that in the World Series last year - but I really think I’m toying with the idea of having the first six teams [in my power rankings list for ESPN] being National League teams because the AL teams are so flawed,” Olney said. “The AL playoff field will be wide open by the time we get to October.”
