Hockey will be Canada's sport forever, but the Toronto Blue Jays have helped raise baseball's popularity in the country, evidenced by their World Series run in 2025. Coincidentally, an exposé on the Montreal Expos aired on Netflix at the end of October to rave reviews. Gonna watch this on Netflix eighty kajillion times during the off-season pic.twitter.com/YncNuukHQa- Montreal Expos (@Montreal_Expos) November 2, 2025
Many of these players reach free agency once their sixth full season in the minors is complete and they haven't been added to a 40-man roster - many of these players were drafted/signed around 2019. Others are heading back to the open market after signing MiLB deals, which run only for the course of that year. These players have already been released from other organizations or their original deals.
In recent news, MLB insider Jon Morosi indicated that the Los Angeles Angels are willing to listen to trade offers for two of their top sluggers. Those two intriguing players happen to be outfielders Taylor Ward and Jo Adell. For an organization that already hadn't had a sniff of the postseason for over a decade, it is quite surprising that they would want to deal two of their best offensive players while leaving their face of the franchise Mike Trout all alone to fight for the team.
FOR THE FIRST time in 32 years, the Toronto Blue Jays won the American League pennant. They also came up just short of snapping their World Series title drought, dropping a memorable, tense, 11-inning Game 7 to the Los Angeles Dodgers at a rollicking Rogers Centre on Saturday.
After all, coming off a hugely disappointing 2024 campaign in which they finished in the basement of the American League East division, no one could have predicted what a successful season the Blue Jays would have going from worst to first and push the defending champions Los Angeles Dodgers practically to the brink for the championship title at the end.
In the bottom of the first, with Shohei Ohtani on the ropes, Bo Bichette hit a three-run home run to give the Jays the lead. It was just the second time in the series that they've scored first. But the Dodgers started to chip away at the lead. In the fourth, Teoscar Hernández hit a sacrifice fly to make it 3-1, then Tommy Edman hit a sacrifice fly to make it 3-2 in the top of the sixth.
Popkins, hired in November 2021, oversaw Twins hitters for three years, helping guide an offense that ranked 11th in wRC+ and 13th in runs scored over the stretch despite major injuries to key players. Then he was made a scapegoat for the team's collapse out of postseason contention and fired after the 2024 season. His unemployment lasted less than three weeks before the Blue Jays plucked him in October.
