The Toronto Blue Jays are two games under .500 at 25-27 in 4th place in an uncharacteristic weak American League East division. At 52 games played, we are just under a 3rd of the 2025 MLB season. Safe to say teams are what they are at this point.

The team has played 17 series with a W-L-T record of 6-9-2…mediocracy at best. Not surprising, a true indication of a sub par roster once again constructed by the incompetent front office, Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins.

Going into the off season the consensus was that the aforementioned Blue Jays executives needed to add at minimum, two power bats. This was not accomplished for reasons unexplained…signing only Anthony Santander who has struggled so far this season and now appears to be hurt.

Power is needed on a MLB club to be a true world Series contender. Once again though, the Jays front office decided to go after an unrealistic UFA…Juan Soto for promotional reasons…hoping the buzz would sell tickets. This failed stunt after the fiasco of Shohei Ohtani the previous off season.

Even the hot start of George Springer at the plate (happy for him) & Daulton Varsho’s power surge since he has been back has not been enough for this team to go on a much needed long winning streak.

The team lacks consistent power at the plate. Thier two supposed dinger bats Vladdy Jr & Santander need to get going with the bat for Toronto to have any chance to contend in the wide open AL East. As well, Bichette needs to continue with the base hits. Other than Springer & Varsho, this lineup lacks MLB calibre bats.

Instead of adding the amount of power needed, Atkins & Shapiro did what they know best, add defense and pitching with the trade for second baseman, Giminez & the signing of pitchers Scherzer & Hoffman. The overall impact to date has been mixed to below expectations.

Giminez after a hot start at the plate has cooled off which was to be expected. At the time of this writing, he is injured. Hoffman also was great at the beginning, however blowing four recent save opportunities is concerning. Maybe Atlanta and Baltimore were correct with not signing him.

Now, let’s talk about Max Scherzer. He has given the Blue Jays three whole innings so far this season. Max’s biggest accomplishment this season was getting caught on TV mocking HP ump C.B. Bucknor by flipping a coin every time a pitch was thrown. How embarrassing for the entire organization. Certainly not going to help with their already reputation for being chronic complainers of the strike zone. Safe to say that this signing for $15.5M has been a complete failure.

Attendance at the Rogers Centre has been affected. It has been absolutely brutal this season to date. The Home Opener…historically sold out within days if not hours of tickets going on sale…took until a few days before the game to sell out.

Another game that historically has sold out well in advance is the July 1st Canada Day game. As of today, May 25th, there are still plenty of tickets available. Not too many seasons ago, I attended a sold-out split double header on Canada Day, when there was greater capacity, pre renovations. Those days are gone.

This season, it’s typical for the Jays to be playing in front of crowds of 60%-70% capacity despite a great promotional schedule…mid week games are struggling to attract fans with only Saturday afternoon games reaching close to capacity of 39,150.

A peek into the future on Ticketmaster for July & August home dates indicates 1000’s and I mean 1000’s of tickets available for virtually all games. How can you blame out of town / province fans for not wanting to spend $$$ to watch a mediocre at best baseball team. I don’t.

Unless this team starts winning and playing exciting baseball consistently (which I highly doubt) the Rogers Centre is going to be 1/2 empty a lot this summer. We could even see attendance below 20K. This would have to be considered a complete failure for Mark Shapiro after convincing ownership to sink $400M into a 2 year renovation project.

My overall grade for the entire organization to date is a D. This is only because of the players, who to their credit have not given up and still play hard. If I was basing the grade entirely on the front office, it would be a resounding big fat F!

Written by Jeff Stanzel

Photo courtesy of TicketMaster