After going two decades without October baseball, the Blue Jays are heading back to the postseason for the second straight season. Toronto clinched a wild-card spot on the final day of the season thanks to a loss by the Tigers against the Braves in Atlanta. The Jays wound up beating the Red Sox in Fenway and will host the AL Wild Card Game on Tuesday.
The Blue Jays find themselves in the postseason because they're one of the most well-rounded teams in baseball. Check out where they rank among the 30 clubs in three important big picture stats:
Runs scored per game: 4.76 (sixth)
Runs allowed per game: 4.14 (sixth)
Defensive efficiency rating: 0.717 (second)
The Cubs are the only other team in baseball that ranks top six in both runs scored and runs allowed per game. Also, the Cubs are the only team with a better defensive efficiency rating than the Blue Jays. (A DER of 0.717 means Toronto turned 71.7 percent of batted balls into outs.)
When you do that, excel at both run creation and run prevention, there's a pretty good chance you'll find yourself in the postseason like the Blue Jays. And after falling short in the ALCS last season, you can be sure they want to get over the hump this year, especially because this may be their last chance at a World Series title with this core group of players.
The Blue Jays have nine players set to become free agents after the season, most notably Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion. Those two sat through a lot of seasons finishing behind the Yankees and Red Sox in the standings before finally breaking through and getting to the playoffs in 2015. They've been at the center of the team's return to contention.
While fans are no doubt emotionally invested in both Bautista and Encarnacion, it's up for debate as to whether re-signing them is a prudent baseball move. Bautista will be 36 next month and his numbers have slipped this year. Encarnacion will turn 34 in January and he is effectively a DH. The Blue Jays have almost certainly received the best years of their careers already.
Bautista floated some lofty contract demands in spring training -- he was said to be seeking five years and $150 million at one point -- and while he won't come close to getting what he wants, he won't come cheap either. Same with Encarnacion. Unless the Blue Jays raise payroll considerably, sinking a significant portion of their budget into two aging players might not be the smartest move.
Among the team's other impending free agents are Michael Saunders, R.A. Dickey, Brett Cecil, and Dioner Navarro. They might lose both starting corner outfielders to free agency after the season. That would be an awful lot of production to replace. The Blue Jays are going to have some roster holes to address this winter, no doubt.
The Blue Jays will still have Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki to build around going forward, plus their highly effective rotation, so it's not all bad news. The club won't go in the tank starting in 2017 or anything like that. This might be their last chance to do something special with this group though. With Donaldson and Tulowitzki and Bautista and Encarnacion.
As good as the pitching has been, the offense is the calling card of this Blue Jays team and it has been for a few years now. The lineup could look very different come next season. This might Toronto's last chance to win with the core that brought that back to contention in the first place.
