The Toronto Blue Jays were two outs away from winning the World Series last season. Nine months later, they might not even make the playoffs.
“We got to start winning,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said in July as his team fell under .500. “That’s just the bottom line.”
That regression would seem to have opened an opportunity for the Seattle Mariners, who lost to Toronto in last year’s American League Championship Series … if the Mariners weren’t similarly having trouble following up their own breakthrough 2025 season.
“Ultimately, we’re just playing very, very, very bad baseball in every facet of the game,” Mariners star Cal Raleigh told reporters this month.
That isn’t how either franchise envisioned this season going when they began the spring with enormous expectations and anticipation for how both might follow up each team’s best season in a generation. Last season, the Jays’ 94 wins tied for the American League’s best record with the New York Yankees, while Seattle had 90 wins. Now, as the teams meet Friday for a three-game series, both are under .500 and on the bubble of grabbing the final wild-card spot with a month to go in the regular season.
Their seasonlong struggles have created a wide-open race for the pennant in the American League. After having won 77 games all last season, the Tampa Bay Rays (79-54) are in first place, with New York (75-57) right behind, even though Yankees star Aaron Judge hasn’t played since he injured a rib in late April. The Boston Red Sox (73-60), despite having fired most of their coaching staff only weeks into the season, have the third-best record. Most surprising of all are the Chicago White Sox, who are 70-63 only two seasons after they won just 41 games. Trying to keep up are seven teams that are within six games of .500 — including Toronto and Seattle.
Each got here in part because of offenses in steep decline. Last season, both ranked in the top five in the American League in runs scored, walks, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
This season, the Blue Jays have drawn the fewest walks in the AL and have the league’s worst on-base percentage, a category in which the Mariners rank fourth worst. They rank third and fourth worst in slugging percentage. Last year, both teams comfortably outscored their opponents; this year, each has a negative run difference.
Schneider, the Blue Jays’ manager, sensed trouble brewing immediately as the season began. Routine miscues, including in routine actions like tagging up and fielding bunts, sank the team to an inauspicious 4-4 start.
“We’re eight games into the season, and I feel like we’ve had some games that scream ‘not us,’” Schneider told reporters April 4. “And when we play ‘us,’ we’re good.”
But Toronto has rarely been good this season, even though Dylan Cease has become a Cy Young Award candidate as one of the best pitchers in the league, allowing only nine home runs and a .175 average.
By July 20, as the team fell eight games under .500, Schneider said he shared players’ frustration.
“I’m frustrated with them,” he said. “I’m not mad at them.”
The most puzzling element of Toronto’s slide is the lack of power from superstar hitter Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Last fall, his eight home runs in just 18 playoff games pushed the Blue Jays into their first World Series since 1993 and to the brink of a title. By this week, however, Guerrero had homered only seven times in 117 games, including none at home.
“I lose sleep … and we need to do a better job,” Ross Atkins, Toronto’s executive vice president and general manager, said this month in a radio appearance about Guerrero’s season. “It has been very disappointing that we haven’t been able to provide the right support for him and the right feedback loop that is correcting this challenge right now.”
“To point to exactly what’s happening, listen, yes, we have an understanding of some of the differences. Whether they’re biomechanical, play and approach, there are some subtle differences. There’s no glaring, alarming concern. … Once those small differences start to become patterns, retraining them while you’re trying to maintain confidence is a very difficult thing.”
A rash of injuries has rarely allowed the Mariners to field the lineup they expected for more than a couple of weeks; in one case, infielder Brendan Donovan sustained a concussion practicing in a batting cage.
But those who are on the field have struggled mightily, as well, with no one more prominent than Cal Raleigh. His 60 home runs last season obliterated the previous single-season catcher home run record of 48 as the “Big Dumper” became a sensation and came within a few votes of winning the AL Most Valuable Player award.
This season, he has hit just 18 home runs as his batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage have all cratered to levels well below his career averages.
Nearly half the balls he hit last season were hit “hard,” by Baseball Reference’s metric. This season, that rate is down to 37%.
“It starts with me; I’m awful. It is what it is,” Raleigh said Aug. 11 after a loss to the Yankees. “I have to find a way to be better and help the guys along. We just have to play better, ultimately.”
Raleigh has begun to find answers, homering in four consecutive at-bats in late August. In a sign of just how jumbled the American League has been this season, the Blue Jays and the Mariners aren’t yet out of the race for the postseason, with both three games behind the final wild-card spot.
The question is whether they can recapture last season’s magic to actually do it.
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