Of all the unfortunate things about the 2026 Toronto Blue Jays - and there are many - the worst part of their sorry season was how much of it resisted explanation.
The Jays were officially eliminated from playoff contention with a 4-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles in the opening game of Wednesday's doubleheader, ending hopes that a late push could yield a miraculous wild-card berth.
Sometimes promising seasons are derailed by an injury crisis. Maybe an old team hits the downside of the aging curve sooner than expected. Big trades or free-agent signings don't always work out; there's no guarantee that a player's success on one team will translate to another.
The Blue Jays entered 2026 with most of the same squad that came heartbreakingly close to winning the 2025 World Series, and some forecasts suggested this year's version looked even better. Dylan Cease had signed a huge contract to be Toronto's ace. They would get a full season of September sensation Trey Yesavage. And even if they would miss Bo Bichette's bat, this was otherwise still the same lineup that had rolled through October with a relentless knack for making contact, getting on base, and generally driving opposing pitchers crazy.
And they had Vlad.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the homegrown superstar, didn't exactly announce himself to the baseball world last fall - he'd done that when he arrived in the big leagues years ago - but it felt like he'd unlocked something during his white-hot postseason. He had eight playoff homers, slugging almost .800. It seemed reasonable to assume that whatever had finally clicked would be on display to some degree over a 162-game regular-season schedule.
Or not.
Almost none of the Jays' expectations were fulfilled. Cease was great, but Yesavage struggled with injuries, as did Shane Bieber, while Cody Ponce was lost for the season almost immediately. The starting depth that had seemed to be a great asset never materialized, leaving the Jays reliant on 42-year-old Max Scherzer as they tried to make a late playoff push. Instead, Scherzer offered proof that even the best competitors cannot simply will their way out of the aging process.
Overall, however, the pitching staff was solid, allowing the sixth-fewest runs in the American League. It was the offense that went in the tank and took the team's hopes with it.
The offensive implosion was so complete that it was hard to comprehend. George Springer followed his bounce-back 2025 season with a free fall, once again becoming a replacement-level player at the top of the lineup. Ernie Clement regressed, as did Daulton Varsho, who was traded at the deadline. Addison Barger missed most of the season through injury, which didn't help a power-starved lineup.
The 2025 team scored the second-most runs in the American League, but its ethos was completely undone as "everybody eats" became "nobody eats." It will remain one of the strangest facts of the 2026 Jays season that the only hitter with any real pop was Kazuma Okamoto, a 30-year-old Japanese rookie. A guy who's never played Major League Baseball before hitting more than twice as many homers as the closest guy on the team is not what you want.
And that brings us, as all postmortems of Toronto's season eventually must, to Vladdy. After blasting eight home runs in 18 playoff games, the naturally gifted son of a Hall of Famer didn't hit his ninth dinger of 2026 until he was approaching his 140th game.
Guerrero hit nine home runs in the pandemic-shortened 60-game season in 2020, when he was 21 years old, and then he belted 48 the following year. He's never reached those power levels again, but there had been no evidence of a looming decline, especially after his monster October.
He's 27 now, an age at which baseball players don't suddenly forget how to hit. And yet ... he kind of did. As the season entered its final week, he was tied in home runs with light-hitting shortstop Andrés Giménez.
As the season wore on and Guerrero's slump became increasingly agonizing, many theories were offered: He was hurt. His approach was all messed up. His timing was off. He got in his head and started to spiral. Some combination of all those things led him to lose confidence at the plate. Whatever the actual reasons, he was barely a shadow of the player who swaggered through last year's thrilling playoff run.
All of that makes planning for 2027 more than a little tricky.
Whatever Toronto's front office does to bolster the roster - and recent history suggests it will try to do a lot - it also must hope (pray, really) that Guerrero figures it out over the winter. He's the generational superstar whose presence in the lineup was supposed to make the Jays a perennial contender.
But if that version of Vlad is already a thing of the past? Well, if you're a Jays fan, it doesn't bear thinking about.
Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.
