Sigh of relief: Blue Jays are exceeding expectations

With the baseball season around the 20-game mark, there's already one conclusion to be made about the Toronto Blue Jays.

They have avoided the worst-case scenario.

When the team left Dunedin for Toronto last month without Vladimir Guerrero Jr. tied to a contract extension, there was a distinct possibility that the Jays were set for a disappointing season that would be followed by the departure of their homegrown superstar in free agency.

In that scenario, Bo Bichette would likely have been next out the door, leaving the Jays anchored by a bunch of players in their 30s, without the big free-agent targets they missed out on over the last couple of winters, and unable to hang on to even their own guys.

That disaster has been skirted. When the season ends, the Blue Jays will have a foundational piece in their lineup for years to come.

As for what will happen between now and October, that part is less clear. A lineup that struggled to hit home runs last year is struggling to hit home runs this year. Some of that can be attributed to the tepid starts from Guerrero and new addition Anthony Santander, plus the absence of Daulton Varsho. But it's not ideal when the second baseman you acquired almost entirely for his glove, Andres Gimenez, is leading the team in home runs.

The starting pitching has been a bright spot, except for the injury to Max Scherzer, which is perhaps to be expected when you sign a 40-year-old war horse. The bullpen looks to be an upgrade on last year's collective tire fire.

Add it all up, and the Jays look decent. It's not a slogan that would excite the marketing department, but "Not as Bad as Feared" pretty much sums up the opening phase of the season.

More than anything, the Jays seem to have benefited from the general malaise of the American League, where 14 of the 15 teams have been between decent and middling, and just one, the Chicago White Sox, has stunk.

But the Jays also have something else working for them - mild expectations.

Three years ago, when the Jays were entering the window of contention that the front office had long talked about, after a narrow playoff miss in 2021, they didn't really come close to living up to that promise. There were two wild-card appearances and zero playoff games won, followed by last season's spectacular collapse into the AL East cellar. In the middle of all that were the high-profile yet unsuccessful pursuits of Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto.

By the time this spring came around, Santander was a nice pickup and the bullpen had been restocked, but they looked to be short at least one big bat and had a lot of older arms in the starting rotation. They also had three guys in the everyday lineup - Bichette, George Springer, and Alejandro Kirk - coming off terrible years at the plate. The front office was once again putting some hope into an entity named Internal Improvement. Turned out that guy couldn't hit last year, either.

The Guerrero contract, or lack of one, sucked up a lot of the attention in spring training, but as camp broke, the general feeling was of a team that needed a lot of things to break its way if it was going to contend - and was on the precipice of a PR nightmare if it was going to be talking about trading its stars by midseason.

But the handy thing about lowered expectations is that it's easier to meet them. Even if the Jays have so far failed to show much of a revived offense under new hitting coach David Popkins, the pitching staff has kept them competitive. And even if Bichette's pending free agency is still looming, the fact that Guerrero is under contract until he's old and grey makes the question of what happens with the homegrown shortstop less urgent.

The Jays are currently in a playoff spot, but are they really a playoff contender? It depends how much work “contender” is doing in that sentence. FanGraphs has their playoff odds at 44%. Baseball Reference is more pessimistic at 27%, but Baseball Prospectus is optimistic at 70%.

So no one really knows what to make of these Jays yet. This was a poor team in 2024 that was coming off two straight winters in which the team-building results fell far short of the goals.

They have since had a decent start. "Could Have Been Worse" wouldn't look great on a T-shirt, but it would be accurate.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.