Five Takeaways From the Toronto Blue Jays’ 2025 Season

The Toronto Blue Jays were the biggest surprise by far in the 2025 season, and they had one of the best seasons in franchise history. From pennant-clinching home runs to rookie star performers and one of the league’s best offenses, this year was one to remember for Blue Jays fans.

While most projections coming into 2025 largely had the Blue Jays finishing at the bottom of the AL East and near the bottom of all of MLB, Toronto defied all the odds this season and pushed their way to the World Series for the first time in 32 years.

The 2025 season was historic for the Blue Jays, and there are many reasons why they were able to defy the odds and be one of MLB’s best teams. Nobody expected this year to go the way it did for the Jays, but they were one of the league’s most entertaining teams all year long. Here’s how that came to be.

Resurgent Offense Without Santander

One of the biggest questions for the Blue Jays coming into 2025 was whether Toronto’s offense would be able to produce enough runs to bring success north of the border. The team’s free agency splurge of $92.5 million on outfielder/DH Anthony Santander was intended to fix this problem and bring a switch-hitting power threat to the heart of Toronto’s lineup.

The problem was fixed this season, but not by Santander.

Santander only factored into 54 games this season and slashed a meagre .175/.271/.294 with six home runs and 18 RBI. Last year’s 44-homer performance that garnered him MVP votes and a Silver Slugger did not translate into 2025 at all. Not to mention that he also missed plenty of time with injuries. The only redeemable part of his performance this season was a 11.3% walk rate.

He returned to the team during the ALDS and ALCS and hit .200 over five games, not tallying an extra-base hit for Toronto. Thankfully, the rest of the stars showed up for the Jays.

Four Blue Jays tallied at least 150 hits this season, joining the Mets and Dodgers as the only teams to achieve this in 2025. Toronto finished second in MLB in team batting fWAR (32.6) behind the Yankees (34.2) and also had the best hitter strikeout rate among all teams at just 17.8% (only three teams were under 20%).

Five hitters on the Blue Jays finished with at least 3.0 fWAR and only one of them (Addison Barger) finished with a strikeout rate worse than the league average (22.2%). Resurgent seasons from George Springer, who just secured an AL Silver Slugger at DH, Barger (21 HR, 74 RBI, 107 wRC+), and Tyler Heineman, who quietly put up a 2.1-fWAR season seemingly out of nowhere.

Toronto’s depth was simply unmatched this season.

Last Year of Vlad and Bo?

Prior to the 2025 season, the fear among Blue Jays fans and their front office was that the team was not going to find any success in the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette era. The Jays were able to sign Guerrero just before the season began and now face a potential free agent departure for Bichette.

However, they’ve certainly made themselves memorable as a duo in Blue Jays history.

Obviously, there is a very sizeable possibility that Bichette could return to Toronto in free agency but nothing is certain just yet. Other prominent and competitive teams will absolutely make their cases to sign Bichette and his time in Toronto could be over.

Guerrero has 14 more seasons yet to come in a Blue Jays uniform, but the team could see a split between their two franchise cornerstone players.

While Guerrero didn’t have as dominant of a regular season as we’ve previously seen, he was still incredible at the plate, slashing .292/.381/.467 with 23 home runs and 84 RBI and tallying his third-best mark in fWAR (3.9). Bichette would’ve likely led all of MLB in hits if he wasn’t injured for most of September, and his season slashline of .311/.357/.483 with 3.8 fWAR and 181 hits fared very well for the Blue Jays.

His game-winning, two-run home run against the Texas Rangers on May 28 has widely been referred to as a major turning point for the Jays this season. Prior to the home run, Toronto had been 26-28, but in the remainder of the season they surged to the tune of a 68-40 record.

Bichette and Guerrero were two of the best players for the Jays this season, and their combined performances played a crucial role in Toronto making the postseason run that they did in 2025.

If this is it for Vlad and Bo together on the same team, what a ride it’s been. They may not have gone out on top, but they put together one heck of a season.

The Importance of Depth

The real thing that separated the Blue Jays from the rest of the league this season was their ability to find value in every single roster spot. Names like Nathan Lukes, Davis Schneider, Ernie Clement, and Barger factored into virtually every game in some capacity for the Jays this year.

Their depth pieces in the lineup played a critical role in the team’s success this year, as Toronto led the league in batting average from their 1-2 hitters (.286), their 3-6 hitters (.263) and their 7-9 hitters (.252). Regardless of where the Blue Jays were in their batting order, they were able to score runs and put up competitive at-bats.

They were also the most clutch team this season, leading the league in batting average with runners in scoring position (.292). They had three of the league’s top-10 players in 2025 by Baseball-Reference’s Clutch metric to determine a player’s value in high-leverage situations: Bichette (5th), Andrés Giménez (9th), and Ty France (10th).

In terms of pitching, the Blue Jays were able to obtain an obscene amount of value from their young arms in 2025. Trey Yesavage had a dominant September debut month and set several franchise and MLB records in the playoffs, Mason Fluharty had a 96 ERA+ over 55 games in his rookie season, and Braydon Fisher notched a 2.70 ERA in 52 games as a rookie as well.

The Jays found value in virtually every way possible in 2025, and it was vital to their success this season. Their rookies helped give them the opportunity to reach the playoffs, and they excelled in their roles once October baseball came around.

Incredible Postseason

The 2025 Blue Jays put the league on notice with their performance in the postseason. While they had one of the best offenses in the league during the regular season, they more than carried that momentum and performance into the playoffs. They led all playoff teams in every part of the triple-slash line by averaging .285/.352/.471 in a larger sample size than any other team.

In every major hitting category, the Blue Jays were the best postseason team this season, and it brought them within one win of a World Series championship.

Among teams with 15-plus games played in a single postseason, the 2025 Blue Jays rank in the top three all-time in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. They set the record for doubles in a single playoff (36) and tied the record for the most singles in a single playoff (124).

On the other side of the baseball, Toronto had a strong pitching staff in the postseason. They pitched 170.0 innings to the tune of a 3.86 ERA, right on pace with Michael Wacha’s 2025 season as a whole — so at worst, the Jays collectively pitched like a very solid middle-rotation starter that posted a 91 ERA- this season.

Toronto’s bullpen was very reliable this postseason as well, as they got outstanding performances from closer Jeff Hoffman (12.1 IP, 18 K, 2 ER, 0.81 WHIP), Louis Varland (15 G, 3.94 ERA, 17/3 K/BB), and many others.

Chris Bassitt performed incredibly in his first relief outings since 2019 (1.04 ERA, 8.2 IP), and Seranthony Domínguez continued his dominance in the playoffs, as his career postseason ERA is 1.86 over 29.0 innings of work.

Appealing Environment

Toronto’s group of players this season was one for the ages, one that felt more like a family than a team.

Some of them even live together — Clement, Schneider, and Joey Loperfido were roommates this season and Schneider allowed Barger to sleep over on his pull-out couch the night before his heroics in Game 1 of the World Series. Countless quotes have emerged since the team’s World Series loss that show just how close this group was in 2025.

Clement remarked following their loss in Game 7 of the World Series “I’ve been crying, probably for an hour… I was having so much fun coming to work every day.” Throughout the 2025 season, the Blue Jays played with a level of enjoyment and camaraderie that was visible on a national stage thanks to their deep run into the playoffs.

For the most part, the Blue Jays’ roster will stay intact heading into the 2026 season, and the team will likely aim to keep as much of the same players together to maintain the locker room chemistry that clicked so well this year. Shane Bieber has already opted-in to his $16 million player option for 2026 instead of testing free agency and securing what likely would’ve been a sizeable more amount of money.

Bieber’s opt-in is a testament to the environment that Toronto has fostered and the success that it has brought to the organization this year, and it’ll be much more appealing to free agents than ever before.

Toronto has lost out on virtually every major free agent they’ve pursued (Ohtani, Soto, Sasaki, Alonso, etc.) but it’ll be interesting to see how much more they’ll be considered in free agency than in previous seasons.