Blue Jays' 2025 run feels like a distant memory

While an element of last season's remarkable Toronto Blue Jays run was happily unexpected, it came with a nagging doubt that was impossible to ignore completely.

The Jays entered 2025 on the heels of a miserable campaign, started poorly, and then turned into a relentless offensive machine. In their run to the World Series, they got key contributions from unheralded guys like Ernie Clement, Addison Barger, and Nathan Lukes, plus back-from-injury pitchers like Shane Bieber and Max Scherzer, plus an out-of-nowhere contribution from Trey Yesavage, who hadn't even been a professional for long.

The Jays came as close to dethroning the Los Angeles Dodgers as it's possible to do without actually doing it. But all the while, fans could hear that little whisper of doubt: "What if this is as good as it gets?"

Fifteen games into the defense of their American League crown, that's become much louder than a whisper. The Blue Jays have a 6-9 record, but it feels more like they're 3-12 - in part because so many of their losses came against the Chicago White Sox and Colorado Rockies, who were terrible last season.

And while there are mitigating circumstances for that middling start - such as injuries to Barger, Alejandro Kirk, George Springer, and almost an entire rotation's worth of starting pitchers - there's no escaping the fact that everything that went right last season seems to be breaking the other way this time.

Japanese slugger Kazuma Okamoto was signed in part to replace the offense of Bo Bichette, who left in free agency. Okamoto's got just three RBIs, despite spending much of his time in the cleanup spot, and 21 strikeouts - a team high by some distance.

Lukes, the epitome of last year's everybody-hits offense, has been ice-cold at the plate, with two hits through 15 games.

Brandon Valenzuela, called up to replace the injured Kirk, is ... not Kirk. His offensive contributions have been close to nil, and that's without considering how much the pitching staff misses Kirk's reliable presence behind the plate.

The soft offensive start - 24th among 30 MLB teams in runs scored - would be less of a concern if the Blue Jays' expected starting rotation was anything close to their real one. Instead, it's miles off the lower end of projections. Kevin Gausman has been brilliant, and free-agent addition Dylan Cease has been almost as brilliant, but after that, it's been a disaster.

Cody Ponce, the free-agent signee who was great in Korea last season, tore his ACL while trying to make a play on an infield ground ball. Yesavage hasn't pitched for Toronto yet and might soon, but Bieber won't, having just been moved to the 60-day IL.

Scherzer has also been dealing with arm soreness, but he's 41 years old; it should be considered a pleasant bonus whenever he is able to contribute. That's left Eric Lauer, who was supposed to be a bullpen guy this season, trying to hold down a rotation spot. The good news is that he's done so. The bad news is that he hasn't earned it based on his performance: His ERA of 7.82 hasn't bumped him out because there is literally no one else to take the spot. Even Patrick Corbin, whom the Jays signed as a warm body when the pitching injuries reached crisis levels, is scheduled to go back out there against the Milwaukee Brewers this week because someone has to.

Gausman and Cease and then pray for release. Or something like that.

There is reason to hope that all of this can turn around, especially if Toronto's injury luck flips and some of the missing players come back to play important roles. Some of the best seasons in Jays history started poorly: 1992, 2015, and 2025, to pick just three.

But hope is also the main thing that the team and its fans can turn to at this point. Hope that the injured pitchers, so crucial last October, can contribute on a regular basis again. Hope that the struggling bats can find the form that carried them through most of last season so that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. - one of the few guys swinging it like he did in 2025 - is not such an obvious candidate to pitch around.

Hope, most of all, that a team that sometimes felt like it was punching above its weight last year doesn't turn back into a pumpkin.

It's early days in the 2026 season, of course. But for the Blue Jays, the time for worry is already at hand.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.