NEW YORK — Start spreading the news, the Toronto Blue Jays are going to the ALCS.
The Blue Jays have eliminated the Yankees in four games with Wednesday’s 5-2 win at Yankee Stadium, finally knocking off the powerhouse that’s felt like their big brother in the American League East for nearly a decade.
Why not the Blue Jays? Why not this year? It’s the dream season no one wants to wake up from.
The Yankees have fallen, and now, the Blue Jays fly back to Canada to kick their feet up for a day, waiting on either the Tigers or Mariners to punch their own ticket to the ALCS in their Game 5 on Friday. It’s the Blue Jays’ first trip to the Championship Series since those incredible runs of 2015 and ‘16. Those teams were overflowing with talent and attitude, just as capable of winning a ballgame as a brawl, but this ‘25 team has captured the country in the best way, which is by surprise.
Why else watch 162 games of baseball — a good 500 hours of your summer — if it weren’t for the game’s ability to surprise you?
This Blue Jays team won 74 games a year ago and came into camp preaching “internal improvements,” two words which have never been printed across the back of a jersey. In the early days of Spring Training, the dark cloud of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s contract situation hung over camp, taking the shine off of just about everything. No matter where you looked, every external projection painted the Blue Jays as a .500 team, maybe even a boring one. Those projections had every reason to.
The Blue Jays are the No. 1 seed in the American League, waiting to host Game 1 of the ALCS while Vladdy and his $500 million contract just had a series we’ll be talking about for the rest of his career.