Why Blue Jays followers must be guardedly optimistic for 2025

Opening week in baseball is a time for prime hopes and boundless optimism.

For Toronto Blue Jays followers getting into the 2025 season, although, hope is decidedly extra measured, and the optimism is muted on the cusp of Opening Day.

Certain, the return of baseball is sufficient to put some further spring in your step. On some degree, you’re comfortable simply to know that actual video games and hotter, longer days are nearly right here. And you may speak your self into believing that this 12 months’s crew is about up for greater than 90 wins and post-season baseball. You’ll be able to think about that the roster tweaks and constructive development and a breakout right here or there may flip this right into a summer season to recollect.

And but, there’s ample cause on the outset of the schedule for Blue Jays followers to maintain aspirations in verify. It’s not precisely cynicism, though that’s at all times on the market. It’s extra a matter that followers are retaining their enthusiasm in reserve for the second.

A few of that’s attributable to a deeply disappointing 2024 season. Given the anticipated trajectory of the franchise lately, to have an surprising step backward and a deadline sell-off is sufficient to make a fan query the course of the crew, and ponder whether the very best of instances have handed for this iteration of Blue Jays.

An enormous low season might have helped to salve these wounds from final season, however though the Jays dabbled on the prime of the free-agent market once more, there have been no historic signings to spark uninhibited fervour. The new range introduced followers a largely passable, principally competent set of signings and acquisitions.

Greater than something, there’s the belief that the crew has seemingly, presumably, reached the tip of the Vlad and Bo period. After six seasons collectively on the big-league roster, and a number of other extra of their ascendancy as prime prospects, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette are doubtlessly getting into their final seasons in Toronto, leaving vital questions looming for what comes subsequent.

Their impending free company poses the uncomfortable query: Is that this the tip of this aggressive window? And if that’s the case, then what’s subsequent?

There’s nonetheless six months and an entire season forward, and maybe some religion that no less than one participant or the opposite may very well be re-signed sooner or later. But when we’re nonetheless pondering when it comes to home windows, the presence of these two second-generation all-stars on the roster served as an necessary signifier of the Blue Jays’ legitimacy as attainable contenders. Their expertise was a possibility, and the chance has almost handed.

The Blue Jays entrance workplace has acknowledged for years that their purpose is to stay perpetually aggressive, with one window opening into the subsequent. However, to torture the metaphor, one can’t be blamed for having trepidation that the step out of 1 window and into the subsequent may contain a precipitous drop.

And one can’t assist however acknowledge the overall state of the world round us in terms of the hassle concerned in mustering up constructive emotions today.

These are the form of ponderous notions that come to crush the spirits after a protracted winter. And but, no less than in terms of baseball, there are some small blooms of perception if you happen to look carefully sufficient.

Regardless of the overall consensus in regards to the poor state of the Blue Jays’ minor-league system, 2025 marks the primary season in a number of years that there have been authentic battles for roster spots that resulted in arduous choices between good younger gamers. Addison Barger, Steward Berroa and Alan Roden spent the final a number of weeks crushing baseballs and customarily wanting like ballplayers. Roden has come north with the Blue Jays, regardless of being a protracted shot on the outset of spring coaching to make the crew, however Barger additionally appears primed to take a step ahead within the coming months.

On the mound, Trey Yesavage appeared as a part of the Spring Breakout video games in Florida this month, and regardless of his youth — he’s nonetheless simply 21 years previous — he regarded absolutely grown, imposing and spectacular in his temporary look.

On the opposite aspect of time’s ledger, there may be future Corridor of Famer Max Scherzer, whose presence in a Blue Jays uniform close to the tip of his profession is no less than a curiosity for followers. How a lot of his legendary depth and high quality he can carry to bear on the upcoming season is an open, if compelling, query.

Notably, Scherzer will flip 41 on July 27, and Yesavage will flip 22 on July 28. If one represents the glories of the previous and the opposite the potential for the long run, the burning questions for the subsequent few months might be the place the Blue Jays discover themselves on July 31, on the MLB commerce deadline. 

Because the mantra goes, it’s a protracted season. However on this extremely consequential second for the Blue Jays, the approaching weeks might be that rather more significant in understanding if that is the tip of 1 period, an extension of the present period (pardon the pun), or a flip towards one thing new, and maybe additional within the distance.