#blue-jays

#blue-jays

Recreating the magic of a run to Game 7 of the World Series is never easy, but this is the task Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins faces this offseason. How do you improve a roster that came within two outs of winning it all? How do you build a team incrementally better to secure those final precious outs of the season? With plenty of players coming and going this offseason, it's an uphill battle for the Blue Jays to defend their honour as American League Champions, but they're hoping they can pull a 2014 Kansas City Royals and run it right back to the World Series after also losing in Game 7.

When a team loses Game 7 of the World Series in extra innings there is bound to be some second guessing. In the case of the Toronto Blue Jas 5-4 loss to the LA Dodgers, the failure to score both the insurance runs they needed and the winning runs when the game was on the line, will forever sting in the hearts of the teams' fans.

The dust has barely settled on the World Series, but one benefit of being a team like the Blue Jays is that there isn't much downtime between the end of the season and the offseason. Once the Game 7 confetti was swept up off the turf at Rogers Centre, it was go time for the Blue Jays front office. MLB free agency opens up on Thursday, and the Blue Jays have some heavy lifting to do.

Except, home plate umpire Mark Wegner blew the call, something that became a common theme throughout the game, and called it strike two instead. The pitch was so far out of the zone that Varsho (rightly) assumed he had been issued a free pass and started to take off his elbow guard. To the surprise of almost everyone, Wegner made a VERY delayed strike call, and everything changed from there.

The Toronto Blue Jays developed a reputation as the comeback kids during the regular season. They did that with an MLB-best 49 come-from-behind wins. That number is also a franchise record. The Blue Jays carried that grittiness into the postseason, tallying another five comebacks in games. The Blue Jays also pulled off a series comeback, beating the Seattle Mariners in Game 7 of the ALCS after trailing 2-0 and 3-2 in the series.

If this postseason has proved anything, it's that the Toronto Blue Jays made the right decision by signing Jeff Hoffman. His career as a starter didn't work out, and in 2021, he joined the Cincinnati Reds as a bulk reliever who could make a start every once in a while. Hoffman's 2022 with the Reds was solid, but it wasn't until 2023 with the Philadelphia Phillies that Hoffman became a high-leverage reliever.

Schneider was back in the lineup on Wednesday evening as Snell returned for his second start of the series, but this time he was used as the leadoff hitter in place of the ailing George Springer. While some fans questioned the decision on social media before the game, the former 28th-round pick quickly silenced any doubters with a solo home run against Snell on the very first pitch of the game.