It's been a strange season for the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays. Six weeks ago, fans wondered when heads would roll in the front office. Now, those same fans are wondering if the same front office will take a big swing at the trade deadline.
Stranger still is that neither position was unreasonable. In late May, the Jays were 25-27, beaten 13-0 in the finale of a three-game sweep by Tampa Bay, and in last place in the AL East. The team looked grimly familiar: buttery soft offensively, and not good enough in other areas to make up for their lack of pop.
The big additions, meanwhile, were a flop. Anthony Santander was below replacement level at the plate, and Max Scherzer had looked very much like a 40-year-old starter, which is to say he was hurt. If Rogers-owned MLSE had just fired Brendan Shanahan as president of the Toronto Maple Leafs for underperformance, what was keeping Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins around?
And then the Blue Jays went 29-12, and from worst to first in the division.
Just under 70 games remain in the season - plenty of time for the narrative to flip again - as Toronto heads into a weekend series with the Athletics. But on the eve of the All-Star break, and just a couple of weeks from the trade deadline, it's fair to wonder just what Shapiro and Atkins make of all this.
Will this team push its metaphorical chips to the middle of the table, having somewhat stumbled into an unexpected big stack? Or will the Shapiro-Atkins duo exercise the caution that's been a hallmark of their time in Toronto?
That last description might seem unfair: The Jays have a top-five payroll in MLB and tried to give big deals to Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto in the past two offseasons, but they've talked about prudence and sustainability since pretty much the day they arrived in Toronto. Shapiro infamously chided former general manager Alex Anthopoulos for weakening the farm system with his aggressive trades for David Price and Troy Tulowitzki in 2015 - deals that helped deliver Toronto's last AL East crown.
But those are just the types of deals that the Toronto front office will have to consider in the coming weeks. If one thing should be painfully clear to the Blue Jays executives by now, it's that opportunities for postseason success can be fleeting. Toronto's last three trips to the playoffs netted exactly zero wins. If this team is going to make it that far - and the recent hot streak suggests that they should - the goal should be to bring in the kind of reinforcements that could make a difference in a series against a battle-tested team like the New York Yankees or Houston Astros.
As much as the Blue Jays have become a fun team again, driven by back-from-the-dead years from players throughout their lineup, it's also the same group that, just a couple of months ago, looked like it might be at the end of its competitive window. If the Jays were to suffer another quick playoff exit, they'd be far from a sure bet to find themselves back in a division-leading position next July.
Still, it's easy to imagine a scenario in which the front office is content to make minor moves at the trade deadline. Three regular starters - Santander, Daulton Varsho and Andrés Giménez - are on the injured list, and there will be a bit of a roster logjam when they return, given the strong play of guys like Addison Barger and Nathan Lukes in their absence. The prices for deadline pickups might be quite steep, given the number of big-market, big-dollar teams that will be looking to improve.
But this isn't a time for prudence or caution. After the highs of 2015-16, and the teams that made baseball relevant in Toronto again, the Blue Jays have been a franchise built on promise followed by disappointment.
The 2025 version, the bounce-back Blue Jays, have suddenly upended the expected order of things. Guys like George Springer say they're playing for each other now, instead of for themselves, which sounds good, but makes you wonder what they were doing last season.
Whatever the reason, the Jays are leading the division in July for the first time in a decade. These chances don't come around too often. Shapiro and Atkins might as well embrace it.
Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.
