Blue Jays fans see all their fears, criticisms validated in just 2 playoff games

Fans who watched the Toronto Blue Jays throughout 2023 had a number of gripes with the team, some of which were more fair than others.

There's no scientific data on this, but the general consensus was that John Schneider was not a strong manager, the offence was unimpressive — particularly in crucial situations — the team was prone to sloppy mistakes, and after 2022's playoff disappointment there wasn't any reason to believe 2023 would be different.

Despite entering the postseason in a promising matchup against a Minnesota Twins team that went 87-75 in the destitute AL Central, the Blue Jays didn't just lose, they gave credence to every major criticism that had been levied against them.

There's a strong argument to be made that you can't learn anything of significance from any two-game sample — even if it comes in the playoffs. On the other hand, it can't be denied that the Blue Jays couldn't have done more to make their critics look astute.

For most of the season, the Blue Jays offence wasn't as bad as many believed. Toronto finished 8th in the majors in wRC+ and its struggles with runners in scoring position were primarily a first-half issue. From August 1 on the team hit .304/.393/.435 in those spots, making them a top-5 club in RISP situations for two months.

By the end of the year, they had slashed .260/.340/.390 with runners in scoring position, meaning they were an approximately-average team in that split. Their issues earlier in the season were burned into the minds of many who followed the club, though. When they went 3-for-14 in those spots against the Twins, it was interpreted as confirmation that they weren't clutch.

Complaints that the team lacked power were more securely backed by the hard data as the Blue Jays ranked 18th in the major leagues in Isolated Power (.161) and 16th in home runs (188). Getting a single extra-base hit over two games is a pretty good way to hammer home the narrative that you lack thump.

Schneider's worthiness as a manager is a more complex issue to parse.

The team underperformed under his watch, and there wasn't a great deal of supporting evidence to suggest he was a tactical genius. At the same time, he was often targeted by a frustrated fanbase looking for a scapegoat — and enough of his work was done behind closed doors that it's fair to say those calling for his head were working with incomplete information.

Then, in the midst of a must-win contest, he oversaw a decision to pull José Berríos in the fourth inning, which was controversial in the moment, led to Game 2's only two runs, and seemed to be based on flawed logic.

A large percentage of Blue Jays fans wanted to see Schneider fired at some point in 2023. That public sentiment has only gotten worse for the skipper.

If you came into Wednesday believing he wasn't the right guy for the job he's currently in, he couldn't have done more to vindicate that opinion — even if decisions like the Berríos-Kikuchi plan belong to more than one person within the Blue Jays organization.

Even the less-precise complaints about Toronto found themselves supported in its battle with the Twins. For instance, there has been a lingering notion that this team lacks attention to detail and shoots itself in the foot too often.

While there are plenty of instances to point to of bad mistakes happening over a 162-game season, it's not clear that Toronto made more of them than other teams.

The Blue Jays 44 outs on the bases were below the MLB average (47) and just four clubs committed fewer errors in the field. Some of the things you could categorize as a lack of attention to detail don't show up in the boxscore, but it's safe to say they weren't a disorderly disaster of a baseball team.

And yet, that's how they were perceived at times by some who were pessimistic about them — and in this wild-card series Bo Bichette made a disastrous out at home that cost his team a bases-loaded situation in Game 1...

... while Vladimir Guerrero Jr. got picked off in a critical spot in Game 2:

Carlos Correa deserves credit for fine defensive work in both cases — there's a reason he has a Platinum Glove on his shelf — but those are rough blunders.

Even zooming out a bit, going into their series with the Twins the idea existed that something about this Jays team and its core made it ill-equipped to win in the postseason. That notion was based on two wild-card sweeps, and it seems intellectually lazy to base broad opinions about a team on four baseball games spread over a multi-year span, especially when a couple of them could've easily gone the other way.

By earning two losses in grim fashion the Blue Jays did nothing to debunk the idea that they simply aren't built for the playoffs — even if that idea was rooted in more emotion than reason, and might've been amplified by some fans' experience with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The 2023 Blue Jays took plenty of criticism from their fanbase over the course of the season, some of it more just than others. In the postseason they had a chance to demonstrate that many of the opinions of came from anchoring to limited information, and confirmation bias rolling downhill.

With that chance this team managed to legitimize every grievance their detractors had with them — from the most level-headed to the least justified.