What’s become of the Toronto Blue Jays? With 2 months left, some fans are giving up hope

What’s become of the Toronto Blue Jays? With 2 months left, some fans are giving up hope

As Jays try to stave off sweep Thursday, the struggling team's playoff chances are dwindling

Less than a year after nearly becoming champions of baseball, and with 60 games left to play, the season-long assessment of what's gone wrong with the 2026 Toronto Blue Jays is already beginning to feel like a post-mortem.

Coming out of the All-Star break with the worst record in its division, the team needed to push to get back in the playoff race. But the Jays have gone 1-5 since then and are at risk of being swept at home Thursday afternoon, a possible nail in the coffin.

The situation this week prompted the Blue Jays Today podcast to ask on social media platform X: "Blue Jays Fans... Is the season over?"

A fair question. With over two months still left to play, the Toronto Blue Jays now have no chance to repeat as division champs, and only 7.2 per cent odds of making the post-season at all, according to sports statistics site FanGraphs, an online resource for baseball statistics.

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Through the first 102 games, the defending American League champions haven't been doing a whole lot of defending. And fans who expected another deep run this October are turning from disgruntled to resigned.

“Does anyone kinda wish the selling would just start so we can get the pain over with, like ripping off a Band-Aid?” one Redditor asked Wednesday, ahead of the Aug. 3 Major League Baseball trade deadline, where the Jays were until recently expected to be buyers preparing for October.

So what happened? And how are Blue Jays fans processing it all?

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Hopes were beyond high coming into 2026.

The Jays had come within two outs — and mere inches — of winning the World Series last fall. The organization then lost star shortstop Bo Bichette, but bolstered the roster with high-profile, off-season signings that signalled a willingness to take another shot at the title.

"We're riding in after the World Series expecting another one, and expecting that this will be the World Series we win," superfan Lesley Mak told CBC News in March, a far cry from the sentiment among most Jays fans in July.

Season ticket and quarter-season ticket packages were nearly sold out before opening day, and demand for single-game tickets was high.

That's kept seats filled, and expensive, even as the team has stumbled more and more through the summer.

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Injuries and an unexpected slide in hitting and fielding have made the team frustrating to watch. But even as the losses pile up, diehard fans haven't had the consolation of picking up cheap seats and enjoying a lazy, last-minute outing at the park.

Large Rogers Centre crowds keep showing up. They've watched star player after star player fall to injury. They've watched the lowest-scoring club in baseball get shut out and routed again and again.

One thing hometown fans haven't seen: Vladdy hit the ball out of the park.

For a man whose hard hits and joyful passion for the game has solidified him as the loveable, heart and soul of the franchise, the decline has been quick, shocking and hard to watch.

After one of the hottest Octobers any hitter has had in recent memory, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., has so far hit only six home runs — none of them at home.

The $500-million star slugger has, simply put, been neither a star nor slugger, taking increasing heat from fans upset on a poor return for his high salary.

The lack of production has occasionally resulted in something that was unthinkable last October: Toronto fans booing Vladdy.

Guerrero Jr. has said he's been playing through lower back issues. He declined his invitation to this year's All-Star Game, saying he needed to recuperate. (The baseball world had been up in arms about his selection in the first place, with accusations Canadian fans were stuffing the ballot box to get the low-performing first baseman on the roster).

It's not just Vladdy. Plenty of other Blue Jays have failed to live up to their tremendous 2025 performances, including Dalton Varsho, George Springer and Alejandro Kirk. And long-term injuries to other sluggers like Anthony Santander and Addison Barger have also put more pressure on others to pick up the slack.

But the Jays will need Vladdy to come to life if they have any chance of bouncing back.

There have been far more remarkable comebacks, with the club a surmountable 6 1/2 games out of the final American League wildcard spot as of Thursday. The roster is still close to the one that made a run last year, and a few players like Dylan Cease, Louis Varland and Ernie Clement have been great.

But they will need to overcome surprisingly poor fielding and hitting to recapture a bit of that 2025 magic and pull themselves back into it. Call it optimistic, call it delusional, but even after a fourth straight loss Wednesday, not all fans have given up.

Ethan Lang is a reporter for CBC Toronto. Ethan has also worked in Whitehorse, where he covered the Yukon Legislative Assembly, and Halifax, where he wrote on housing and forestry for the Halifax Examiner.