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| oh hey by the way, great job the other night in your MLB début, Trey Yesavage |
Six wins in a row, and seven-of-eight (against Houston and Tampa Bay, with the Orioles snuggled right in between), would be welcomed by any team at any time, surely, but it seems especially nifty halfway through a September in which one is attempting to seal the deal on both the American League East title and, radder yet, the best record in the American League, full stop. The Blue Jays, up five games (effectively six, given tiebreaking realities) over the fairly contemptible New York Yankees in the East, and four (effectively five, for the same reason) over the noble Detroit Tigers in the American League broadly conceived, are in about as good a September position as they have ever been in their history. And believe me, I'd know! I've been around for almost all of it! Which brings me to my point, one that is at once both broader and narrower than this season's standings, and also a little silly, and it is this: after Tuesday night's 6-5 squeaker over the Rays, the Blue Jays' all-time regular-season record throughout their forty-nine summers now stands at a perfectly balanced—I am inclined to say exquisitely balanced—3850 wins and 3850 losses. This is the first time the Blue Jays have been perfectly .500 (to as many sig figs as you've got) since May 20, 1995, at which point their record stood at 1416 and 1416. It's been a minute, as they say! (It's also pretty wild that the Blue Jays had been above .500 cumulatively at all by that point, so early in their history, even allowing for the amazing ten seasons running 1984 through 1993 in which they had been the best team in baseball.) The Blue Jays now join the Houston Astros as the only expansion teams to be at (or above) .500 over their entire history, and you will recall that it has taken the Astros this last decade of true excellence after deeply strategic deep-tanking of a rebuild for them to get there. It is in this respect, though, that the Blue Jays and Astros (who are also alike in that they have both won two World Series titles [no expansion team has one three]), extremely part company to the max in recent years: while the Astros have been all about peaks (yay!) and valleys (oh no), the Blue Jays have chosen a different path, that of deep and abiding mediocrity, a mediocrity unsurpassed in the recent history of the game. And this is not only a subjective expression of what Werner Herzog might call an ecstatic truth, or, after Worsdsworth, a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; no, we've also got charts about it! Math charts!
In a recent r/baseball post titled "The most consistently mediocre MLB teams from the last 25 years," user "No-Comfortable-9418" shared remarkably compelling evidence to this effect—the text at the bottom is pretty small, so I will note here that it reads "1999-2024, Formula: Percentage of Mediocre Seasons (0.45—0.55 winning %) x (1-Distance from 0.500 overall record.)" And look:
We haven't just been mediocre; we have been mediocre with such intensity—with such ferocity, really—that we are outliers at being mediocre. "Makes sense," another redditor notes in that same post; "I remember the 2000's. Every year I was pretty confident we were going to go 83-79." Oh ho, not so fast, user "BillNeedleMailbag"! In my own personal favourite season of the 2000s—the ineffable 2003 season in which Roy Halladay won the Cy Young, and Carlos Delgado lost out on the AL MVP to the otherwise-deserving but admittedly enhanced Alex Rodriguez (I attended every home game on an $81 Toronto Star Season Pass, and have both the scorekeeping book and Vernon-Wells-autographed baseball to prove it)—the Blue Jays managed a stirring 86-76! (The Yankees won 101 that year, the Red Sox 95 to take the lone Wild Card.) Oh hey, let's note, too, that our now perfectly .500 baseball team, the one that has been far and away the most mediocre team of the last twenty-five years, has also, with its back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993, won a perfectly average number of championships over its forty-nine seasons. Two titles is exactly what you'd expect of the average team in a league of this size over that much time! Isn't this wild? In a moderate sense?
In sum, I think this is just great. I would also like to say in closing that I am so, so, so stoked about the possibility of wrapping up both the AL East title and the AL itself should the next week-or-so go at all well—playing even just a little better than we did throughout the 1987 collapse would pretty much do it at this point. On the subject of injured shortstops (Tony Fernandez getting slid into was the instigating incident in 1987, you may recall), it is regrettable, certainly, that Bo Bichette's sprained knee is going to keep him out the remainder of the regular season, but Gimenez and Clement up the middle really is a real treat to watch, isn't it? If Bo could DH in the playoffs, that would put Springer in a corner outfield spot, but maybe offer a stronger overall team defense? Especially when you've got Myles Straw to plug into the outfield in the late innings? There is much to consider going forward. But as I am well and truly a guy of the regular season, the next eleven games honestly feel like a bigger deal to me personally than whatever happens in the wacky tournament that happens afterwards. I would also definitely like us to win that wacky tournament! Do not mistake me! And I am certainly not trying to convince anyone that mine is in any sense the enlightened view. But to play 162 games, and come out of it with the best record in the American League—with an outside shot, still, at the best overall record in either league, a feat we did not manage even in the never-to-be-repeated 1984-1993 run—is honestly enough for me, and far more than I expect from or even hope for in any season.
KS
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