Blue Jays' Success Named One of Biggest Surprises of 2025 MLB Season

The Toronto Blue Jays have been a consistently underwhelming presence in the MLB for years.

After spending the late 2010s accruing several young cornerstones, the Blue Jays looked poised to spend the 2020s as World Series contenders.

Instead, they have not made it past the American League Wild Card round since the team's last core fell short in the 2016 ALCS.

In 2020, 2022 and 2023, Toronto got swept in three consecutive appearances in the wild card series.

In 2024, they bottomed out, missing the playoffs altogether and finishing with a brutally disappointing 74-88 record.

In a tough division, very few predicted that the Jays would have much of a chance to win the AL East.

Now, as of August 27, they've surpassed last year's win total with a record of 77-56 and own a four-game lead over the Boston Red Sox in the division.

Blue Jays Have Surprised by Maintaining AL East Division Lead Toronto's success has been one of the biggest stories of the season so far, and when MLB.com writer Anthony Castrovince listed his 13 biggest surprises of the year , he was sure to include the Jays' sustained success.

"Torontos commanding position in the AL East is surprising relative not just to what many of us expected going into the year but also to what we saw when we looked at the standings on May 28, when the Jays were a game under .500 and eight back," Castrovince wrote.

"To be frank, we had grown too accustomed to letdowns in this era of the Blue Jays, who reached the postseason three times between 2020-23 but never won a playoff game and then finished in fifth in the AL East last year." The Blue Jays' front office deserves credit for taking action to change the narrative around the team.

At the start of the season, the club inked star Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

to a lucrative contract to tie him to the organization for the foreseeable future and ensure that he would not hit the open market in free agency.

That was a big move to earn the trust of fans that ownership and the brass were serious about contending, and they doubled down at the July 31 MLB trade deadline, when they took a high-upside swing by acquiring former Cy Young award winner Shane Bieber from the Cleveland Guardians.

Bieber had not pitched all year on his way back from a long-term injury, but when he finally made his Toronto debut on August 22, he looked like his old self, holding the Miami Marlins to one run over six innings of two-hit, nine-strikeout ball.

There's a long way to go, and the race for the division is by no means over , but the Blue Jays have laid a strong claim to one of the more improbable division wins that we could see all season.

More Blue Jays News.

This article has been shared from the original article on si, here is the link to the original article.