The Toronto Blue Jays’ struggles are enough to drive anyone insane. What could have been an All-Star break in which most of the roster — excluding All-Stars Ernie Clement, Louis Varland, and Dylan Cease — went home, relaxed, and returned refreshed for a midsummer push ahead of the trade deadline instead became little more than a brief pause from their season-long struggles.
Losing four of their first five games back from the All-Star break has reminded Blue Jays fans all too well of the frustrations they endured through the first 96 games of the season.
Here are some storylines from the Blue Jays’ return from the All-Star break that reinforce their season-long struggles:
Blue Jays Struggles Continue: Self-Inflicted Mistakes
The Jays have committed five errors over their last two games. Across that stretch, Cease’s errant pickoff throw, a pair of errors by Kazuma Okamoto, Clement’s dropped pop-up in shallow right field, and a ground ball that rolled through Andrés Giménez’s legs at shortstop are all reminders of Toronto’s season-long struggles with self-inflicted mistakes. And it doesn’t stop with the defense.
In Tuesday night’s game, on a line drive single up the middle from George Springer, Nathan Lukes didn’t know the position of the infielders, which kept him from scoring and prevented Toronto from scoring its first run of the game.
It’s the little things for this baseball team as it continues to make the same mistakes it was making a month ago.
It was a problem then, and it is a problem now.
Same Story, Different Week
There has been enough talk about the well-below-average season of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., but Okamoto has not had a hit since returning from the All-Star break. Daulton Varsho has only one multi-hit game in his last 20 games, and his defense has not been up to the caliber expected of him. Since returning from injury, Alejandro Kirk‘s OPS has dropped 230 points.
Guerrero Jr. has taken a lot of heat for his struggles, and rightfully so. The 14-year, $500 million contract he signed just over a year ago might have something to do with that. However, Guerrero Jr. is just one of nine in this lineup. If you zoom out and look at the Blue Jays’ offense as a whole, it paints a much bigger picture.
That picture is this: The Blue Jays have scored three runs over their last 27 innings. Springer’s double in the sixth inning Tuesday night marked Toronto’s first extra-base hit in 25 innings.
Same story, different week.
Sellers or Buyers?
The Blue Jays’ playoff odds have dropped nearly 10 percentage points — from 20.1% to 8.8% — since heading into the All-Star break, according to FanGraphs. Much of the optimism surrounding Toronto’s playoff chances rested on the parity of the American League. However, if you don’t win ballgames, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the league is doing.
Toronto would have to go 39-22 to reach 85 wins, which would match the lowest win total by an AL team to qualify for the wild-card round, achieved by the 2017 Minnesota Twins. The Blue Jays currently have a projected win total of 76, nine wins shy of that mark.
If this conversation were taking place a week ago, there would have been a debate about whether the Jays would be buyers or sellers. However, numbers don’t lie, and based on them, Toronto’s chances of being buyers at the trade deadline are just as slim as its chances of making the playoffs.
Who Is To Blame?
You can look to the front office, the coaching staff, or the players in times like these. It’s hard to believe the front office is at fault, given that it brought in Okamoto and Cease in the offseason and got a steal in Varland at last year’s trade deadline. You can’t put it all on manager John Schneider when his biggest stars aren’t contributing. It doesn’t take a genius to know that this ballclub’s struggles have little to do with structure and everything to do with performance — and a frustrating lack thereof, for that matter.
Schneider’s comments after the Blue Jays’ 7-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays summed it up:
"I'm frustrated with them. I'm not mad at them, I am frustrated with them, we all are."
John Schneider on the Blue Jays' offensive slump. pic.twitter.com/GQ5nZR17rl
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) July 21, 2026
Results are driven by players, and results have not been a regular occurrence for this Blue Jays team.
Main Photo Credit: Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images
