Do the Jays Have What it Takes to Become Playoff Oddities?
With playoff odds of just 14.7% per FanGraphs is the Blue Jays' season already doomed? Probably! But not necessarily!
The Blue Jays continue to find ways to make this wretched season worse. After building some vaguely positive momentum over an 8-5 stretch against the lowly White Sox, Tigers, White Sox, and Pirates, they have immediately fallen brutally flat in the first two games of a four-game home set against the Orioles this week. So far they've been outscored 17-3 by their division rivals. Their run differential has slumped back down to -45; the eighth-worst mark in baseball. FanGraphs has their playoff odds down to 14.7%.
Now, I'll be the first to say that a two-game sample means virtually nothing, and to note that, depending on what you're talking about, a one-in-seven chance of something happening isn't necessarily so bad. There were literal decades where we dreamed of having such a chance. But, of course, it hasn't just been two games. This team has underperformed expectations, especially against better competition, for more than a full calendar year now. And, on the playoff odds front, the goalposts keep shifting. When they dipped down to 32% in early April, I recall noting that it was the lowest ebb for this club since missing the playoffs on the last day of the season in 2021. Now it's much worse, and we're really grasping.
But how much are we grasping? Or, more accurately, how much are those of us who haven't yet tuned out or fully written these Jays off grasping?
Playoff talk? Seriously?
Yeah, I know what you're thinking. But the thing is, we're not even in “crazier things have happened” territory yet. Every single season recently there have been teams that have made the playoffs after facing similar or worse odds this late or later in the season—and, occasionally, even with run differentials as poor.
These Jays certainly don't feel like a team that's ready to beat those odds and leapfrog a bunch of strong teams to make an unlikely run to the playoffs. But I suspect that few of the teams to pull that trick felt like that at their worst either.
Let's examine the most recent examples...
2023
Arizona Diamondbacks
13.4% on August 11th (57-59), Rdiff: -26
The National League in 2023 didn't exactly cover itself in glory, with a pair of 84-win teams capturing the second and third Wild Card spots. So I'm not sure how relevant this is to the Jays’ predicament. But last year’s Diamondbacks, as all the Jays fans who only paid attention to Gabriel Moreno in October can attest, became the poster children for the fact that all you have to do in the modern MLB is get to the dance and hope to get hot at the right time. Thanks, Manfred! Arizona made an exciting run all the way to the World Series last year after finishing the season 27-19 (+11 Rdiff) from August 11th onward—just the fourth-best record in the NL from this point—only to fall back to earth so far this year. (At 29-32 currently, their record is just a half game better than the Jays' 28-32 mark.) (Daulton Varsho has been significantly better than Moreno so far too, FWIW.)
Miami Marlins
11.0% on August 30th (66-67), Rdiff: -60
The other team that benefitted from the NL's lack of quality last season, by the end of August the Marlins sat behind the Phillies, Cubs, Giants, Diamondbacks, and Reds among NL Wild Card-chasers, but picked a great time to have their best month of the year. Going 18-11 from this point on, despite having just a +3 differential, got them to October. But just as important as what they did was what happened to the teams around them. The Reds showed their mediocrity (13-14; -11), the Giants collapsed (10-19; -48), and the Cubs scored their runs at absolutely the wrong time (12-17; +19). Once your odds get to this point you do need help to turn things around, and while it may be hard to see which of the teams above them could provide the Jays this kind of help, they can’t all keep winning, right? RIGHT??!?
Philadelphia Phillies
21.4% on June 1st (25-31), Rdiff: -45
Their bottoming-out was slightly earlier on the calendar, and their odds never quite got as bad as the Jays' are right now, but last year's Phillies eventually stormed to 90 wins despite having the exact same run differential and a worse record than this year’s Jays do. Granted, they were 3.5 games back of the third Wild Card spot by the start of June, whereas the Jays now are 5.0 back. And, more crucially, they needed to play at a 99-win pace the rest of the season just to get to those 90 wins—a pace it really doesn't feel this Jays team has in it, and never has. But there's hope in this model, limited as it may be. (Yes, Bryce Harper missed the first month of this season for Philadelphia, which contributed to their problems, but I think you could reasonably argue that Bo Bichette essentially missed this April for the Jays as well. I sure as hell didn’t see him!)
2022
Philadelphia Phillies
19.4% on May 31st (21-29), Rdiff: 0
Another year, another slow Phillies start. This one probably isn't the greatest comparison for the Jays, given the run differential difference, but the 2022 Phillies team squeaked into the third NL Wild Card spot at 87-75, just ahead of the 86-76 Brewers—the only other NL club above .500. Like the Diamondbacks would a year later, they made a run all the way to the World Series though. And they did all this despite missing Harper from late June until late August. There are lessons here, perhaps. The one I'm sure that most Jays fans will want to highlight? At the point in the season we’re talking about here the Phillies were just one day away from firing their manager.
Seattle Mariners
5.3% on June 19th (29-39), Rdiff: -19
The 2022 Seattle Mariners? Never heard of them. But, according to the data, here they were in mid-June with a near-zero chance of making the playoffs. These Mariners, like the 2021 version, were weirdly outstanding in one-run games, which was part of what allowed them to claw back into the race. But there was more to it than that. They were about to go on a ridiculous 22-3 run from this point on into the All-Star break. They were still good after the break, playing at a 91.5-win pace, but it was the run, which included a 14-game winning streak, that truly turned their season around. It's just that simple, folks!
Cleveland Guardians
8.7% on May 29th (19-24), Rdiff: +10
You will probably not be surprised to be reminded that the AL Central of 2022 was not a good division. It featured just one very good team, and four that were at .500 or below. Funnily, though, that one good team flipped somewhere between May and October. At this stage the Guardians were struggling, trailing both the .500 White Sox and the high-flying (29-19) Twins. Chicago would go on to finish at exactly 81-81, but while Minnesota would soon collapse, Cleveland would surge. From this point onward the Guardians would go 73-46, and the Twins would go 49-65, leading to Cleveland winning the division by a comfortable 11 games. The key reason? Injuries. In a mid-September piece for the Athletic (also never heard of it), Aaron Gleeman noted that to that point the Twins had “placed an AL-high 31 players on the injured list for more than 2,000 total days.” Perhaps one day the Baseball Gods will actually smile upon the Blue Jays and smite their opponents like this but, given how the last 30 years has gone, I'm not exactly holding my breath.
2021
St. Louis Cardinals
2.7% on June 27th (37-41), Rdiff: -52
2.8% on September 7th (69-68), Rdiff: -24
I have two dates in here for the Cardinals of 2021 because it wasn't just a bumpy road to the playoffs for them, they spend half of the season in the ditch.
By September they had managed to make up just five games since their lowest ebb in late June. An 8-1 stretch in early August hadn’t even given them much of glimmer of hope, then it was straight back to mediocrity. However, a 19-1 stretch from the 7th to the 29th of September did manage to do the trick. Simple as! It even gave them enough breathing room to finish up with three losses in their final five games.
Though they were bounced from the playoffs after one game under the old Wild Card format, they at least made it to the dance. And, as we know from here in Toronto, Wild Card appearance flags apparently fly forever.
Atlanta Barves
7.7% on July 27th (50-52), Rdiff: +44
A team around .500 at the trade deadline, but with a much better run differential than the ones ahead of them, making some aggressive trades that propelled them to glory? I wonder where I've heard that one before?
It wasn’t clear that the NL had much of a Wild Card race as the 2021 trade deadline approached. The Padres held the second spot at 60-44, while possessing a run differential of +97. The Reds, at 52-49 (-17), were 6.5 games back, and the Cardinals (51-50; -33), Phillies (50-50; -25), Cubs (50-52; -23), and Atlanta (50-52; +44) trailed them.
Looking at the run differentials it seemed as though Atlanta had the best chance to put up any kind of fight. So, as he does, Alex Anthopoulos rolled the dice. He had already acquired Joc Pederson by this point, but in the coming days he would also add Adam Duvall, future NLCS MVP Eddie Rosario, and future World Series MVP Jorge Soler.
Mark Shapiro would never have approved, and he may have had a point, as it took two of the biggest collapses in recent history—the Padres went 19-39 the rest of the way, while the Mets were 23-39, with both teams ultimately missing the playoffs—and a massive surge from his own club (38-21) to get to October. But it worked, and Atlanta went on to win the whole damn thing.
Perhaps the lesson here is that having a more cunning, more aggressive GM would help the Jays? But where would they ever find someone like this guy, amiright?
2019
Oakland A's
5.2% on June 16th (37-36), Rdiff: +26
14.2% on July 26th (59-47), Rdiff: +77
The 2019 season in the American League was a weird one, largely because this year featured a ton of non-competitive teams—and therefore more volatility among the playoff odds of teams at the top. The Jays’ 4.0% odds on March 31st was the peak for not only them, but a group including the Orioles, Royals, Tigers, and White Sox as well. The Rangers, Mariners, and Angels were all below 16.5% from April 10th onward, and were down to zero by early August. That's why Oakland was able to be a decent team for most of the year while remaining on the outside looking in. That is, until they reeled off 60 wins over their final 89 games. It didn't hurt them that the Red Sox, 59-47 on July 27th and a half game behind them, didn't make a deal at the trade deadline and finished the year going 29-31. Feel free to have some cheap-ass owners lurking around again this July, American League!
Milwaukee Brewers
5.6% on September 5th (71-68), Rdiff: -43
The Brewers here are a better example for this year's Jays, as they were a middling team that were fortunate to hang around .500 into September, yet managed to get to the postseason regardless. On the 5th of that month they sat tied with the Mets, five games back of the second Wild Card spot, with the Philles, Diamondbacks, and the holders, the Cubs, all ahead of them. An 18-5 finish—which began with three wins over the Cubs starting on the 6th—changed all that. Chicago finished 8-15, and the other teams couldn't keep up. Just keep hanging around!
St. Louis Cardinals
18.0% on July 12th (44-45), Rdiff: 0
A simpler story here, but maybe a good one to end on. The Cardinals played like a .500 club through the first half of the 2019 season. They got healthier in the second half, found some important bullpen pieces in rookie Ryan Helsley and converted starter Carlos Martínez, and—most importantly—they simply played better.
Their 4.14 ERA and 4.54 FIP as a team in the first half improved to 3.44 and 3.96 in the second, with Jack Flaherty breaking out to the tune of a 0.91 ERA post-All-Star break, and Adam Wainwright's 4.07 ERA being the highest in the rotation over that span. Offensively they went from having a 91 wRC+ as a team to 100. Kolten Wong exploded to a 140 mark in the second half after being at just 87 in the first, Paul Goldschmit looked much more like himself (129) after a rough start (106), Tommy Edman had a strong season all around, Yadi Molina had a 114 mark in the second half, up from 72 in the first, etc.
Do this year's Jays have it in them to follow the '19 Cardinals' lead? It sure doesn't feel like it, and the run differential won't give anyone not already discouraged by what they've seen so far much confidence. But I think even the most frustrated fan would have to admit that—taking all the teams we’ve looked at into account—things aren't yet at the point of hopelessness here.
That's not a great tag line for the next four months of baseball—Toronto Blue Jays baseball: it's not quite hopeless yet!—and it certainly feels like it will be a futile effort to keep on shouting “PLAY BETTER!” like we already have been for more than a full year now.
But... well... we don't seem to have a whole lot else left at this point, do we?1
Other examples of note…
• Colorado Rockies: 3.3% on June 27th, 2018 (38-42), Rdiff: -42
• Minnesota Twins: 3.7% on August 5th, 2017 (52-56), Rdiff: -74
• New York Mets: 6.7% on August 19th, 2016 (60-62), Rdiff: -16
• New York Mets: 15.4% on June 24th, 2015 (36-37), Rdiff: -20
• Texas Rangers: 3.0% on July 28th, 2015 (47-52), Rdiff: -48
• Toronto Blue Jays: 15.6% on June 1st, 2015 (23-29), Rdiff: +25
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At least not until they win their next two against the O's, go to Oakland, sweep out there, and everything feels a hell of a lot different come Monday. TRYING TO MANIFEST.
"So, you're saying there's a chance?" - Lloyd Christmas
So what you’re saying is that at some point we need a 14 game win streak. Ok.