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Baseball is back.
I mean that literally — the 2026 Major League Baseball season began last night with the Yankees beating the Giants 7-0 in San Francisco, while 22 other teams open today — and figuratively as the sport feels reinvigorated right now on both a global and local level.
The ascent began three years ago with the (at the time controversial) decision to introduce a pitch clock, ban the infield shift and introduce other rule changes designed to improve the flow and quality of the game in response to two decades of increasingly joyless analytics-based innovations. Despite warnings from so-called purists who deemed these moves too radical, they’ve worked beautifully, restoring baseball to something that better resembles the game people fell in love with.
More recently, the sixth edition of the World Baseball Classic was an absolute blast, blending the sport’s many distinct cultures — Northern American, Caribbean, Asian, and this time even Italian — into a delicious stew of raucous crowds, high-quality baseball and plenty of drama, culminating with Venezuela’s stunning win over the United States in last week’s championship final. And of course it didn’t hurt that Canada qualified for the playoffs for the first time ever.
But the biggest reason for baseball’s resurgence in this country is the sudden rise of the Toronto Blue Jays.
After eight years without a single playoff victory, the Jays soared from worst to first in the American League East last season, capturing their first division title in a decade. That set the stage for a magical post-season run that saw them eliminate the hated Yankees in the first round before beating Seattle in a seven-game thriller to reach the World Series for the first time since Joe Carter touched ’em all in 1993. In the Series, the Jays nearly pulled off the unthinkable, getting within one play — several times — of upsetting the mighty defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers before losing one of the most exciting Game 7s in history.
As the Blue Jays prepare to open their season on Friday night against the visiting Athletics (now based in Sacramento as they await a move to Las Vegas), it’s worth taking stock of what a difference a year can make.
At this time last March, long-suffering Jays fans were sweating the possibility that franchise player Vladimir Guerrero Jr. might fly the coop as the organization struggled to re-sign him to a long-term deal. But, 10 days into the season, Toronto locked its star slugger in for another 14 years (at a cool $500 million US) and Guerrero went on to have a post-season for the ages, belting eight homers while batting an absurd .397/494/.795 and playing outstanding defence at first. And now the Jays have an incredible degree of stability from the executive suite all the way down to the field after extending the contracts of team president Mark Shapiro, GM Ross Atkins and manager John Schneider over the off-season.
A year ago, Trey Yesavage was toiling in the lower reaches of the minor leagues. Now he’s a household name after a sparkling post-season that included a World Series rookie record 12 strikeouts in his Game 5 gem at Dodger Stadium. Other new fan favourites include Addison Barger and the delightful Ernie Clement, who batted .411 in the playoffs and broke the record for total hits. And there’s a fresh appreciation for 36-year-old George Springer, who turned back the clock with 32 home runs in the regular season and smashed four more in the playoffs, including his dramatic go-ahead blast in Game 7 of the AL championship series.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Star shortstop Bo Bichette left in free agency for the New York Mets, while pitcher Chris Bassitt signed with Baltimore. And Toronto will be without three members of its projected rotation for a while as Shane Bieber (forearm fatigue), Jose Berrios (stress fracture in his pitching elbow) and Yesavage (sore shoulder) begin the season on the injured list.
Fortunately, the front office prioritized pitching depth over the off-season, luring strikeout artist Dylan Cease from San Diego with a seven-year, $210M deal and bringing righty Cody Ponce back to the majors for three years, $30M after he dominated the Korean league last year. Along with lefty Eric Lauer and 41-year-old firecracker Max Scherzer, they’ll help stabilize the rotation behind Opening Day starter Kevin Gausman until the injured guys return.
The Jays also added submarine reliever Tyler Rogers (3 years, $37M) and Japanese infielder Kazuma Okamoto (4 years, $60M), who batted .327 with power and an excellent contact rate (something Toronto prizes) last season for the Yomiuri Giants.
All in all, things are looking pretty good for the Jays to contend for another trip to the World Series. But you can’t take anything for granted in the brutal AL East, where Toronto is projected to be in another dogfight with the Yankees, the Red Sox and even the Orioles. And, if the Jays taught us anything last year, it’s to expect the unexpected.
