Blue Jays fall flat in MLB playoffs once again as current core can't seem to progress

For the third time in four seasons, the Toronto Blue Jays have been swept in the wild-card round of the MLB playoffs.

In the other year, they fell one win short of waging a three-game battle for playoff survival.

After an agonizing 2-0 loss to the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday, the Blue Jays have confirmed that 2023 will not be a year of forward progress for the franchise. It's an outcome that an inconsistent 89-73 season hinted at, but the team had an opportunity to rewrite it's narrative in these playoffs.

Instead, it added another chapter to the same story.

The Blue Jays have yet to win a playoff game in the Bo Bichette-Vladimir Guerrero Jr. era. Their last postseason victory was started by Aaron Sanchez, and 14 players suited up for the Blue Jays that day. Only one — Josh Donaldson — played in the majors this season, and he was as washed as they come.

Seven years without a postseason victory isn't a massive drought in the grand scheme of things. The Twins broke an 18-year dry spell in Game 1 on Tuesday, and the Blue Jays didn't even make the playoffs once between 1993 and 2015.

You can interpret the last few seasons of Blue Jays baseball as a success without being disingenuous.

Since the beginning of the 2020 campaign, Toronto ranks sixth in the majors in regular-season wins (304). The team has made the playoffs three times in a four-year span just one other time in franchise history. Losses in three-game series have been rough for the Blue Jays, but a three-game series isn't much more than a crapshoot between teams of similar talent levels.

While it's fair to criticize Toronto's playoff performance, it comes from a six-game sample spread over a four-year span. It's probably more fair to take aim at the fact they continually found themselves in wild-card series to begin with.

The five-game series a division title would've granted them wouldn't have guaranteed any deep runs, but it would've made them more resilient to individual tough-luck events, like Matt Chapman falling a couple of feet short of a possible game-winning home run on Tuesday...

... or the three-run bloop hit that tied Game 2 of Toronto's series with the Seattle Mariners last year.

Prior to 2023, the narrative surrounding the Blue Jays was that their unbalanced composition prevented them from being the kind of team capable of winning division titles and succeeding in October.

The lineup was too right-handed. The offence was too reliant on bashing extra-base hits. The bullpen lacked strikeout arms. The outfield didn't provide enough defensive support to the pitchers.

All of these criticisms had elements of truth to them, and the Blue Jays front office went about tweaking the roster to correct its flaws after the 2022 season — even if it meant compromising some of its strengths.

Most of the moves the team made worked to one degree or another.

Chris Bassitt and Erik Swanson solidified the pitching staff as José Berríos and Yusei Kikuchi bounced back. The excellent pitching was converted into elite run suppression, thanks in large part to the incredible defence that imports Kevin Kiermaier and Daulton Varsho provided. Veteran Brandon Belt became the team's most productive hitter on a per at-bat basis, and gave Toronto a left-handed power element it had been missing for years.

The problem ended up being the core the Blue Jays made those moves around. Guerrero's offensive output declined for the second consecutive season. A knee injury prevented Bichette from having a huge year. George Springer's move to right field helped keep him healthy, but his bat was ordinary. Alek Manoah fell off a cliff and didn't even pitch down the stretch. The catcher combination of Alejandro Kirk and Danny Jansen — that emboldened the Blue Jays to trade the ultra-talented Gabriel Moreno — went from a major differentiator to a modest strength.

Outside of Kevin Gausman, no one on this team had a stellar season. A squad that was theoretically high on star power found itself low on star-level performances.

The fact that 2023 was supposed to be different made its familiar ending extremely difficult for fans to stomach — particularly when the club looked less convincing or entertaining than recent iterations.

If this group is going to find a way to escape its pattern of being good, but not good enough, that improvement is likely to fall on the shoulders of the guys already in the building.

Free agents Chapman, Kiermaier, Belt, and Jordan Hicks need replacing. While Hyun-jin Ryu's expiring contract will help free up some money for that task, the team will have difficulty finding players outside the organization capable of generating similar production. Re-signing anyone in that quartet isn't out of the question, but it would be costly.

The farm system could bring forth some important contributors with guys like Orelvis Martinez, Addison Barger, and Ricky Tiedemann not far from making MLB debuts. It will also be fascinating to see what Davis Schneider could do with more at-bats. There's no blue-chipper seemingly destined to make this team much better in the near future, though.

The best chance Toronto has of taking the next step as a franchise is if the guys they've been building around play more like they did in 2021 and 2022. That means Guerrero, Springer, the catchers, and, to a lesser extent, Bichette, with Manoah as the ultimate wild card.

The veteran pitching staff and complementary players should be good enough if this group's best players can be among the best players in the league. But it's tough to mount a playoff run when your top position player by fWAR (Bichette) ranked 48th in the majors during the regular season.

Until the Blue Jays' core plays like a group to be feared, this team won't ascend to the upper echelon of the majors. They may make a wild-card series or two. They might even make a magical run. It could be accurate to describe them as a sustainable contender, which is the greatest aspiration of many front offices.

Right now they're seen by many as a squad that's disproportionately likely to fail in the playoffs, and that's probably unfair. Even six losses in a row is the type of outcome random variance can throw any team's way — particularly spread out over a four-year span.

What's clear is this team isn't the type of loaded squad that you actively expect to thrive in October. The Blue Jays are not in the same category as the Atlanta Braves or Los Angeles Dodgers. Losing in the playoffs has becoming surprisingly routine for the club, but they've never fallen massively short of expectations in October because they've never earned those expectations in the first place.

Contrary to popular belief, if the Blue Jays keep doing what they're doing they aren't doomed to playoff failure. Their wild-card series losses aren't as scathing an indictment on this franchise as the most cynical observers will be shouting from the mountaintop in the days to come.

But the team's quality in recent seasons has left a great deal up to chance. The Blue Jays could create the illusion of progress by getting better luck in the waning years of the Vladdy and Bo era — or they could take a genuine step forward by becoming the sort of club less reliant on fortune to favour them in October.

Lady Luck has not been their friend yet, and unless their stars produce like stars again — or they find more via massive financial commitment or surprising developmental success — they'll need plenty of help from her in the years to come.