It may have gone down to the final day of the regular season, but the Toronto Blue Jays managed to secure the AL East crown at last with a 13-4 romp over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 162 on Sunday night. The Blue Jays own the tiebreaker over the Yankees so they controlled their own fate, and they managed to hold their end of the bargain — receiving a bye to the ALDS in the process.
Had the Blue Jays stumbled and lost in Game 162, they would have had to play the Boston Red Sox in a three-game series, which is a dangerous proposition considering how Boston can just ride out Garrett Crochet and need just another herculean pitching performance from the rest of their pitching staff to end Toronto's World Series hopes. But now, they can at least rest up and wait for the Red Sox and Yankees to beat up on each other, facing the team that makes it out of that bloodbath instead.
But at the moment, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the Blue Jays, despite celebrating their overall successful 2025 regular season, know that the ultimate goal is well within their reach and that they cannot rest on their laurels.
“Job’s not finished,” Guerrero said during the Blue Jays' locker room celebration on Sunday, per Mitch Bannon of The Athletic.
What the Blue Jays will be raring to do is to finally win their first playoff game since 2016. In three previous playoff appearances in the 2020s, Toronto could not win a single game in the AL Wild Card series.
But now that they skipped that series altogether, perhaps Guerrero and the Blue Jays' luck is finally taking a turn for the better.
Blue Jays waste no time in clinching AL East crown on Sunday
There was a bit of nervousness surrounding the Blue Jays on Sunday; they've been leading the AL East since the start of July, so for them to potentially lose out on the division crown on the final day of the regular season must have been nerve-wracking.
Nonetheless, their first-inning explosion definitely calmed a lot of nerves especially after ace Kevin Gausman allowed the Rays to score in the first inning. They scored five runs in the bottom of the first and did not look back en route to a dominant 13-4 victory.
The Blue Jays' first postseason game of 2025 will be held at Rogers Centre on Friday, October 3.
