How low can they go? Blue Jays headed for one of worst regressions in franchise history

With a record of 77-79, Toronto has 17 fewer wins than at the end of that remarkable, division-winning, AL championship season of a year ago

Published Sep 20, 2026  •  7 minute read

Blue Jays' Spencer Miles gets sets to pitch against the Detroit Tigers during the eighth inning at Rogers Centre on Sept. 16, 2026 in Toronto, Canada. Photo by Kevin Sousa /GETTY IMAGES

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As the clock ticks down on the season and the standings register what for months has seemed inevitable, one of the few remaining questions with the foundering Blue Jays is how low can they go?

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Yes, there are six games remaining.

Yes, prior to Sunday’s game in Texas, the standings showed they were three games out of a playoff spot, with obscure mathematical scenarios keeping them on life support, a prospect helped by a 7-2 win over the Rangers.

And yes, the American League is true dog-bleep this season.

But after an utterly demoralizing and heartless 7-1 loss to the Rangers on Friday night in Texas was followed by an equally meek effort in a 6-2 defeat on Saturday, the Jays found themselves almost guaranteed of enduring one of the worst season-over-season plunges in franchise history.

With a record of 77-79, the Jays have 17 fewer wins than they had at the end of that remarkable, division-winning, AL championship season of a year ago.

That mark has them headed for one of the worst drops in wins, and this from a team that entered this year amid high expectations to build on last autumn’s World Series appearance. Instead, they are now left with a bewildered, yet loyal, fan base and a weary, morose and desperate group of players that appear to be a shadow of what they were 12 months ago.

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No matter what happens over the remaining two series, this season will go down as one of the most profound regressions since they came into existence 50 seasons ago.

Worse, that development could come with a team that began September with what felt like legitimate hope to overcome its under-achieving ways and sneak into the post-season tournament via a swung-open back door, only to wilt badly in the late going.

So, instead of a return to the playoffs (which remains unlikely even with Sunday’s win) and renewal of that excitement of a World Series run, this is apparently where what was billed to be a celebratory anniversary season will land.

Barring a miracle finish and confluence of help elsewhere, the Jays will not only miss the playoffs in this ultimate gettable year, the disappointment and decline will go down among the most profound the franchise has seen.

How bad is it?

The Jays have moved up to two games below .500 (an aim-low target that they’ve rarely surpassed) and 18.5 games out of the lead in a division they won a year ago in a breakthrough last-to-first 2025 season that triggered a rapturous October for a coast-to-coast Canadian fan base.

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The worst Jays plunge from one season to the next came in 2004 when the team went from 86 wins to 67, an embarrassing slide that resulted in manager Carlos Tosca being removed mid-season and replaced by the inaugural run of John Gibbons as skipper.

For those with good memories, that last-place season saw the Jays finish 33.5 games out of the division lead as injuries to ace Roy Halladay and outfielder Carlos Delgado dashed any hope of ending an 11-year playoff drought.

From start to finish, expectations were low and that group delivered. They certainly weren’t burdened with World Series expectations.

Next on the dubious decline list was much more recent. The 2024 Jays finished with a 74-88 mark, a drop of 15 games from the previous year, but a relatively alarming turnabout given the hope attached to playoff appearances the previous two Octobers, albeit ones that ended in spectacular flameouts.

Like 2004, those results were to be expected, given a trade deadline selloff by general manager Ross Atkins, who was trying to salvage something from a season that clearly wasn’t headed towards success. Out of that came some good, as the Jays cleaned up some communications issues and responded with that brilliant 2025 season that now seems so long ago.

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This season? Hopes were high, TV packages were hiked in price, not to mention the cost for tickets at the Rogers Centre, which rather remarkably has been filled to the brim all season long.

In fact, the most recent two home games saw the largest crowds of the season at the Rogers Communications Cashbox. Among those two was the Sept. 15 debacle, a non-competitive affair from the start that saw the home side lose 10-1 to the Detroit Tigers in front of 43,554, the most to witness a game in Toronto this season.

What about the playoffs?

Before you stop chortling, it would take what seems to be an unfathomable set of results among a combination of five teams, including the Jays, to make it to the post season.

Accordingly, the Fangraphs projections of Jays playoff odds have been on a severe tumble by the day, from 27.2% on Monday to a teensy 4.4 per cent prior to Sunday’s finale of a three-gamer against the Rangers in Arlington, Tex.

Even running the table in their final two series would still require help from elsewhere, given that the Jays began Sunday three games behind the White Sox for the final wild-card spot. Worse, the Chisox hold a tiebreaker on the Jays, should the unlikely materialize.

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What makes this apparently lost season worse to digest, however, is the run-out-of-gas effort towards the end, despite the opportunity in front of them.

The Jays entered Sunday’s contest having lost four of their previous five — each of those in a fight for which was most gruesome — each in what shaped up as near must-win games.

Losing two of three to the Athletics in Sacramento earlier in the month should have been a harbinger and certainly dug them deeper into the crater. But the ugliest may have come in the most recent homestand when the Jays dropped two of three against the Tigers.

And now it’s as forlorn as its been, with news out of Texas on Sunday that one-time ace and Cy Young Award candidate Dylan Cease will not make his next scheduled start after returning to Toronto for an MRI on his shoulder.

A rotation already in tatters is now without Cease, whose struggles down the stretch have abetted the skid.

Out-of-town scoreboard turns ugly

In reality, the wayward results of some of the other AL underachievers had a portion (majority?) of the Jays fans duped into believing they had a shot.

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Much of that dodgy hope had been based on the help that seemed to be falling the Jays way in the previous couple of weeks, with other “contenders” scuffling towards the end as well.

That the Jays weren’t able to take advantage of such fortune was bound to bite them and, with their untimely slide of late, are paying the price.

Worse, the Jays have gone from being in relative control of their own destiny, to the point where winning out would likely still require some help. Given the play of late, it’s difficult to buy into that optimism.

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How bad has it been?

Weariness aside — all teams in MLB play 162 games, last time we checked — the Jays’ poor play of late has been alarming. They’ve gone an unsightly 4-8 since Sept. 6 and have a minus-14 run differential in that stretch. Prior to that, they had been a rousing 23-12, a run in which the magic seemed to have returned.

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During the first two losses to the Rangers, 11 of the runs they allowed were directly attributable to either walks or errors as tight baseball, which defined this team through much of 2026, has gone missing.

It’s clear that players such as George Springer and Ernie Clement are grinding through physical ailments and who knows what mental and physical tolls are burden to Vlad Guerrero Jr.?

The latest issue with Cease (and possible season shutdown) is concerning, but not a surprise. His velocity has plummeted and he hasn’t been effective recently, so it’s not as if his loss dramatically alters the fragile hopes that remain.

So, what’s left?

We’ll keep the window open for a day or two, as long as the math says it is so.

After finishing up in Texas, the Jays head to Baltimore for a three-gamer against the Orioles, a series in which one or both AL East rivals could be eliminated.

As recently as a week ago, the season-ending series against the lightweight Cincinnati Reds back in Toronto seemed like opportunity on a platter for a Jays team to salvage a lost season and snag the final AL wild-card spot.

Now, barring circumstances unforeseen, those games could be next to meaningless and loom as a 43,000-person wake for a season gone awry, one of the worst in Toronto sports history when gauged vs. expectations.

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