2024 Toronto Blue Jays

2024 Toronto Blue Jays / Franchise: Toronto Blue Jays / BR Team Page[edit]

Record: 74-88, Finished 5th in AL Eastern Division (2024 AL)

Coaches: Mark Budzinski, Carlos Febles, Matt Hague, DeMarlo Hale, David Howell, Guillermo Martinez, Don Mattingly, Hunter Mense, Pete Walker and Jeff Ware

Ballpark: Rogers Centre

History, Comments, Contributions[edit]

The 2024 Toronto Blue Jays were coming off a postseason appearance, but also off a very disappointing season in 2023. The team that was expected to rise to dominance in the American League struggled to barely qualify for the postseason, and once there was quickly dispatched by the Minnesota Twins in two games in the Wild Card Series, the third time they had been swept at that stage in four years (in the other year, 2021, they had missed qualifying for the postseason by just one game).

The key to the new season for the Jays was to maintain what had worked well the year before - a great team defense and an outstanding performance by their starting pitchers, the two factors being related - while improving the one area that had not - their hitting. On paper, they were not a bad hitting team, putting their share of runners on base and hitting a decent number of homers, but those long balls all seem to come with the bases empty, and their inability to hit with runners in scoring position was a constant source of frustration. They also seemed to make more than their share of baserunning mistakes, costing them runs, and all of these factors were on full display during the postseason sweep, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. making a particularly egregious baserunning blunder in the second game, which they lost, 2-0.

Contrary to previous years, the Blue Jays did not sign any big name free agents over the winter, even though they were aggressively in the running to sign superstar Shohei Ohtani, instead shedding some of the worst performers of the previous year and bringing in second-tier free agents. So gone were 3B Matt Chapman, DH/1B Brandon Belt, 2B/OF Whit Merrifield and P Hyun-Jin Ryu, and joining the team was DH Justin Turner to take Belt's place with the hope that, in contrast with Belt, he would get the occasional hit with men on base, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa to kind of replace Chapman at third base, although the plan was to have a number of players cycle through the position. The Jays also decided to promote two players internally, Davis Schneider, a utility player who had become a folk hero in Toronto for his nerdish looks and unexpected power surge after being called up the previous August, and IF Ernie Clement who had belied his reputation as a "good field, no hit" backup infielder by hitting well over .300 in both AAA and the majors. Cavan Biggio, who had found his batting stroke during the second half after it had gone missing for over two seasons, was slated for a bigger role as a 2B/OF, CF Kevin Kiermaier was re-signed after a good if not spectacular season, and another intriguing addition was P Yariel Rodríguez, who hadn't been on a mound since the 2023 World Baseball Classic but who had flashed considerable talent in Nippon Pro Baseball before that. But the biggest factors for success in 2024 would be whether Guerrero, OF Daulton Varsho and C Alejandro Kirk could bounce back after disappointing seasons with the bat, whether SS Bo Bichette would continue to be the team's best offensive player, and, as a wild card, whether former ace P Alek Manoah could bounce back from whatever had made him lose his ability to pitch the previous year.

Early returns on the season were mixed, to the point that no one could detect a pattern. Forced to start the season with a long road trip to allow the completion of improvements to the Rogers Centre that had begun a year earlier, the Blue Jays split a four-game series with the Tampa Bay Rays. What was strange was that they won Games 1 and 4 handily, with starting pitchers José Berríos and Kevin Gausman both pitching well, and were defeated soundly in Games 2 and 3, with the Jays scoring 17 runs in the two wins, and allowing 13 in the two losses as none of the games were close. Guerrero hit a monster homer over 450 feet in the opener on March 28th and Kirk contributed a key hit with the bases loaded to break open the game, and Turner and Schneider both homered in Game 4, but the bats were asleep in the other two games. Then, on April 1st, the Jays moved on to play the Houston Astros and put on a wretched performance, being no-hit 10-0 by relative unknown Ronel Blanco and coughing up five gopher balls in doing so, to the point that Kiner-Falefa had to pitch the final inning. So the question was still open: were the Blue Jays any good? They ran their scoreless streak to 17 innings the next day, when they were muzzled by Framber Valdez, until Davis Schneider played the hero, hitting a homer to deep center off Astros closer Josh Hader with two outs in the 9th to give the Jays a 2-1 win. That blast obscured the fact that the Jays had done little offensively in the first eight innings of the game, something that couldn't be hidden when they were limited to just one hit in the final game of the series, an 8-0 loss. It was now clear that not only were the previous season's hitting problems still a thing - they were worse than ever! For the record the Jays were just the fourth team to be both no-hit and one-hit in the same series since 1920. They completed the trip by going 1-2 at New Yankee Stadium, while their pitchers allowed a grand slam in each of the two losses, to Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton respectively. As a result, the Jays were 4-6 when they finally made it back to Toronto.

The Rogers Centre was jam-packed on April 8th to show off the $400 million in renovations that had included a complete re-build of the lower bowl. The Jays then did honor to the new setting with a 5-2 win over the Seattle Mariners, with Berríos making his third straight excellent start and a number of players contributing big hits. The homestand was fairly good, as the Jays won two of three in each of the three series, and also saw the return of four players who had missed the start of the season: catcher Danny Jansen and Ps Jordan Romano, Erik Swanson and Yariel Rodríguez, the latter making his major league debut after missing all of last season. However, they missed the chance of putting down an early marker, as Toronto was on the verge of sweeping the Yankees to finish the homestand on April 17th, with a 4-2 lead in the 9th, but a homer by Stanton sparked a rally against Swanson, and New York won the game, 6-4, negating a two-homer performance by Varsho. They finished the month at 15-16, largely because they went 2-6 over their last 8 games in April; that in turn was largely a result of a lack of offense as they did not score more than three runs in any of the six losses in spite of some generally solid pitching.

May was a rough month for the Jays, as they went 12-13, and basically saved their record by winning their last four games against two of the worst teams in baseball - the Chicago White Sox and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Before that mini winning streak, they had fallen back as many as 12 1/2 games from first place. The starting pitching was good: from May 8th to 31st, they allowed three runs or less in a game 13 times in 19 games, but pitchers like Berroa and Yusei Kikuchi found it almost impossible to record a win because the offense was sputtering badly - during that same stretch, they had 9 games in which they scored 3 runs or less - and incomprehensively another five when they scored 7 or more. It was feast or famine, with no distinguishable pattern, making it even more frustrating. Their best hitters during the month were Guerrero, who hit .357 and drove in 14 runs, and Jansen, who hit .293 and slugged. 507. On the other hand, Springer, Bichette, Turner and Biggio were all mired in deep slumps, with Springer being demoted from the lead-off slot as a result. The month ended on both a good note and a bad note: Davis Schneider hit a walk-off home run in the 14th inning on May 31st to end what was the longest game played by the Jays since the introduction of the tiebreaker in 2020, but that same day Manoah, who had given signs of finding his old form during the month, had to go on the injured list for what was expected to be a long stay after leaving a start two days earlier after just 2 1/3 innings - in fact, he was lost for the remainder of the season. Bizarrely, in spite of playing a lot of close games, this was the Jays' first win of the year achieved in walk-off fashion (they had lost twice, both times in May, and both times with Romano giving up a game-ending homer). Romano, who had struggled all season, went on the injured list on June 1st.

Another strange stat in this Blue Jays season was that not a single time after May 4th did they score a run in the 1st inning (for anyone not up on their Sabermetrics, the 1st inning is typically the one in which teams score the most runs, as it's the only one in which they can determine in advance which batters will hit and in what order). In fact, this drought was now reaching historic proportions: with a loss on June 1st, it had reached 23 games, easily erasing the past franchise record of 20 dating back to their inaugural season in 1977 and in the top 10 of worst performances by any team in the last decade. Given the team's disappointing season, a lot of discussion began to be raised about what should be done in the long term with Guerrero and Bichette, both of whom had one year left before free agency after this season, with many observers suggesting that the Jays should trade one in order to address some of the obvious weaknesses on the team. GM Ross Atkins initially dismissed this talk as "not making any sense", but he would change his tune by the end of the month. One change they did make was to have Biggio designated for assignment on June 7th, in order to bring up Spencer Horwitz, who had been burning up AAA. The move paid dividends the next day when Horwitz scored a run in the 1st inning against the Oakland Athletics, finally putting an end to that embarrassing streak after 30 games. In that same game, Gausman pitched the first complete game shutout of his career in a 7-0 win. The Jays could never reach .500 however, getting within one win of the magic mark on a number of occasions, but always losing the game that would have evened up their record. Horwitz did well after his call-up, and the Jays also jettisoned DH Daniel Vogelbach, who, even though he was clearly highly appreciated in the clubhouse, was hardly getting any playing time and not producing much of anything when he did; he was replaced with another youngster in Addison Barger, also up from Buffalo. While no one could fault those moves, they coincided with the Jays going into a seven-game losing streak in mid-June that pushed them to the bottom of the standings in the AL East. During that stretch, Yimi Garcia, who had be the team's best relief pitcher until then, joined Romano on the IL. Next it was Bichette who had to miss a stretch of games. And if things weren't going badly enough, his replacement, the team's top position player prospect, IF Orelvis Martinez, was handed an 80-game suspension for a failed drug test a mere two days after making his debut. The offense started to finally click again with Bo's return, with Davis Schneider, Kiner-Falefa and Springer all producing multiple-homer games, while Vlad Jr. also hit homers in a bunch, including the longest of his career in Fenway Park on June 24th. Still, it was a really tough month for the team, as they went 11-16, their third straight losing month. They then started July by losing 3-1 to the Astros in their traditional Canada Day mid-afternoon game at the Rogers Centre.

Another sign that this was a bad season came when only one member of the team was named to play in the 2024 All-Star Game, and that was Guerrero who was voted by fans. He was easily the team's best player over the first half and by the time play resumed after the break, the talk was about who would no longer be around after the trading deadline. While a lot of articles focused on what players like Guerrero or Bichette could bring back if traded, management made it clear that the aim was not to conduct a fire sale or tear down the team. Thus, while the Jays were very busy, trading eight players in eight separate deals, they were all players whose contract was set to expire at the end of the year, with one exception. When the dust settled on July 30th, gone were Ps Yusei Kikuchi, Yimi Garcia, Nate Pearson and Trevor Richards, C Danny Jansen, IF Isiah Kiner-Falefa, OF Kevin Kiermaier and DH Justin Turner (Pearson was the exception, with another year left on his contract). The return was a haul of prospects, almost all of them position players, except for veteran P Ryan Yarbrough, who was the return from the Los Angeles Dodgers for Kiermaier. The biggest return came for Kikuchi, reflecting the premium on quality starting pitchers, as he netted three players, including OF Joey Loperfido and P Jake Bloss, both of whom had already reached the majors, and IF Will Wagner, who was promoted to Toronto within a couple of weeks. Their record in July, at 12-14, was slightly better than the one in June, but it was still their fourth straight month of playing below .500, and the focus going forward was on preparing for the next season by sorting out which of the young players to be given some playing time were worthy of a regular job going forward.

With the youngsters playing prominent roles, all supported by Guerrero's continuing hot streak, the Jays played a lot better in August. This included completing a season sweep of all seven games they played against the Los Angeles Angels, including one in spectacular fashion on August 23rd with two of the youngsters putting their stamp on the win. First, Loperfido led off the bottom of the 9th with a game-tying homer off Roansy Contreras and the next batter, Barger, hit a homer himself, this one ending the game by giving the Blue Jays a 5-4 win. The following day, it was journeyman starting pitcher Bowden Francis who took a star turn, flirting with history when he pitched eight hitless innings, then came out to pitch the 9th, only to surrender a solo homer to the first batter, Taylor Ward. Chad Green, quietly having an excellent season as the team's closer in Romano's stead, then retired the next three batters to complete the one-hitter. On August 26th, history was indeed made, during the completion of a suspended game started on June 26th at Fenway Park when it had been stopped by rain in the 2nd inning. When play resumed on August 26th, Jansen, who had started behind the plate for the Jays and who was at bat when play was halted, entered the game as the Boston Red Sox's catcher in what was his first appearance against his former team while Daulton Varsho pinch-hit for him and completed his at-bat. Jansen thus became the first major league player to appear for both teams in the same game. The Jays won that game as well as the regularly scheduled game played that day, with a rejuvenated Springer homering in both contests. Suddenly, there was again some fun to be had in following the team. They ended the month by setting a season record for runs and hit (23) in demolishing the Minnesota Twins, 15-0, in a game that tied the team record for largest margin of victory in a shutout. The game featured four homers by four different players, and the fifth consecutive winning start for Berrios. As a result, the Jays had their first winning month of the season, finishing August at 16-12.

Continuing with the youth movement, on September 1st, the Jays fielded a line-up with 777 games of major league experience collectively, with Ernie Clement the most experienced of the bunch with 253. It was the fewest games of experience by a major league team since the 1972 Chicago Cubs had done something similar in September. In contrast, the Twins' Carlos Santana had over 2,000 games of experience by himself! The starting pitching continued to do well in September, apart from the occasional hiccup - the usually reliable Chris Bassitt gave up 7 walks in less than 5 innings in his penultimate start against the Red Sox on September 23rd, but the young Jays had trouble putting runs on the board, and even when they did, an overmatched bullpen would often cough up these early leads. Injuries were also a big factor: Bo Bichette finally came back in mid-September, but only played one game before a broken finger ended a season to forget; both Wagner and Varsho ended their season early due to various ailments, and the Jays were unable to find someone to back up C Kirk, who had the longest hitting streak of his career in the final month and also managed to hit his first career triple, but who needed to take the occasional breather. Two bright lights were Guerrero who hit the milestones of 30 homers and 100 RBIs and was closing in on 200 hits when the season ended, and Francis, who continued to pitch lights out to the end even if the wins were no longer coming, for the reasons just mentioned. The Jays finished with their first losing season since 2019 - the year when both Vlad and Bichette debuted - and their first last-place finish since 2013. They limped to the finish line, being swept in three games at home by the Miami Marlins to end the year, and going 2-10 over their final 12 games to finish at 74-88. It must be said that with all the injuries, their starting line-up over that stretch was Guerrero and a bunch and of no-names, and consequently they had all sorts of troubles scoring runs. Guerrero provided the only excitement over that stretch as he made a valiant effort to get to 200 hits, but in the end he fell one short as he went hitless but drew three walks over the team's final two games. He finished second in the AL batting race, behind Bobby Witt Jr., with a .310 average, 30 homers and 103 RBIs. Kirk also had some nice moments in September, putting together an 18-game hitting streak that ended on the season's penultimate day.

Awards and Honors[edit]

All-Star: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
AL Gold Glove: Daulton Varsho (CF)
AL Silver Slugger Award: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (1B)

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2024 Toronto Blue Jays

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