About 16 months ago, I wrote a story arguing that the current Blue Jays roster had likely hit its end, and that they needed at least a soft reboot. Specifically, I argued that that would involve punting the 2025 season and retooling with an eye on 2026, and that in order to do so they should fire Ross Atkins and find a new GM.
The intervening season and a half have thoroughly illustrated why I’m a part time blogger and not a baseball executive. It’s not just that I don’t own any quarter zips, I clearly missed what was going to be a team that came as close to winning a World Series as any ever has without actually doing it. Now that the season’s over I thought, in the interest of fairness and of trying to learn a little, that I’d go over what lead reality to so greatly exceed my expectations.
Starting Point: The Existing Roster
The biggest single thing that went right for the Blue Jays this past season was players already on the roster simply having better seasons. A lot of moves made in previous seasons didn’t bear fruit in 2024 but did in 2025. That discussion has to start, of course, with George Springer. The Jays’ biggest ever free agent signing spent 2023 and ‘24 looking like he was aging fast, with slipping defence and a bat that fell quickly from one of baseball’s best to below league average. Attempting to dump half his remaining salary at the cost of a prospect was a real consideration last winter. The move to DH this spring looked like the first step in phasing him out of the lineup. It… was not. He hit over .300 for the first time in his career, mashed 32 homers, and posted the third best overall batting line in baseball. This run doesn’t happen without that near-miraculous turnaround. His improvement was bolstered by other, less amazing performances. Bo Bichette rebounded from an injury plagued ’24 campaign to post his usual 134 wRC+, Alejandro Kirk finally got back to his early career offensive levels thanks to the return of his power stroke, and Daulton Varsho figured out that his best bet at the plate is just to swing real hard, trading career worst strikeout and walk rates for excellent power production. Addison Barger also took a big step forward after a rough rookie season and became a middle of the lineup threat.
What can I learn from that? The Bo bounce back wasn’t a guarantee, but it was hardly a surprise either. Getting a career year out of a 35 year old Springer is great, but I’d be prepared to call anyone who says they expected it a liar. One thing I do have to give significant credit for is the trust the front office placed in Alejandro Kirk. Coming into 2025, he’d never caught 90 games in a season before, and was coming off back to back years in which his batting line was below average. Asking him to take over as undisputed starter and locking him up to an extension before knowing how he’d fare was a risk. He rewarded that confidence by starting 111 games, posting a 116 wRC+, and playing defence that should have netted him a gold glove. He’s established as one of the premier starting catchers in the game and he only turned 27 a couple of weeks ago. His 5 year, $58m contract is instantly one of the most valuable assets in baseball. The signing marked a change, as the front office finally moved early to lock up a homegrown player to a team friendly extension after years of failing to do so. If there’s a takeaway from all this, I suppose it’s to trust your evaluations. Everything went wrong in ‘24, but Atkins and co largely stayed the course and were richly rewarded for their perseverance.
The 2024 Draft
Another key contribution to the team’s success this season was the early fruit of the previous draft. Trey Yesavage rocketed through the minors on his way to bolstering the team down the stretch and eventually posting the best start by a rookie in World Series history. Getting that from the #20 pick is a home run. Khal Stephen, their second round selection, also made aggressive progress in his first pro season, reaching AA and landing on the back of some mid-season top 100 lists. That progress created enough perceived value that he could be flipped for Shane Bieber, the biggest name starter traded at the deadline. The draft has in the past been a weakness of this regime, so what changed?
As far as I can tell, not much. They’ve taken gone for college or junior college starters five times in 11 picks, making that their most common direction, but they’ve opted for high school hitters three times, college hitters twice and a prep pitcher once, so they’re clearly not dogmatic. If there’s a thread through their recent picks, it’s players who have slipped a little relative to pre-draft expectations. From 2020 through 2024, all of their picks were publicly expected to go higher than they eventually did at some point in the process. Jumping on Yesavage when he slit a little because of some weird injury luck (he suffered a punctured lung late in his draft spring as a result of a dry needling accident) is entirely on brand. It’s just that in contrast to the selections of Austin Martin, Brandon Barriera and Gunnar Hoglund the strategy seems to have worked. Stephen was perhaps a bit of a departure, a command oriented starter in contrast to the stuff-first college pitchers they’d previously preferred with non-first round top 100 picks (CJ Van Eyk, Juaron Watts-Brown, Ricky Tiedemann, Trent Palmer). Perhaps that put him in a better position to move quickly and return trade value early.
Again, the learning might just be that a sound strategy will eventually pay off, even if the initial results are rocky. Optimistically, this could also represent early returns on the massive investment in pitching development the team made when they rebuilt the Dunedin training complex.
Surveying the decisions made through the end of the 2024 season, the story seems to be one of continuity. I don’t think “simply believe in the front office, it’ll all work out eventually” is a realistic conclusion. They’ve made plenty of bad decisions, and have had four losing seasons out of 10 in spite of consistently high payrolls and inheriting a contender with Vlad waiting in the wings. It has to be acknowledged that they’re a competent group, though, and averaging 88 wins (pro-rating the shortened 2020 season) over six years in the AL East should earn them a measure of trust. Tomorrow, I’ll look at their decisions during the 2024 deadline and through the 2025 league year.