Blue Jays Go From 2025 World Series to 79-83

On Wednesday, the Blue Jays have no game to play.

That is an ordinary fact of an off-day and a painful fact of October. There is no upcoming Toronto game listed. The season ended at 79-83, in fifth place, and the club that made a 2025 World Series run has been reduced to watching what happens next.

A fan can get used to a bad result. It takes longer to get used to how quickly the calendar changed.

A different October

MLB.com reported that Toronto was eliminated from postseason contention on September 23. The final game came afterward, on Sunday against the Cincinnati Reds. It was a 5-1 Blue Jays win, and it did not reopen the season.

There is something particularly dreary about that order. First the consequence, then the last chance to enjoy a ballgame. Toronto gave its fans a pleasant afternoon only after the larger question had been settled.

The 2025 World Series run makes this October feel stranger, not because last year guaranteed anything about this one. It guaranteed nothing. A World Series appearance does not carry over in the standings, however badly a fan might wish to keep a little of it.

But it does change what a quiet Wednesday sounds like. Last October gave Toronto a reason to follow its own team. This one asks its fans to decide whom they can bear to watch.

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The standing does not blink

The Blue Jays won 79 games and lost 83. They finished fifth. Their last ten games produced a 4-6 record, and the final win left them with a W1 streak.

That streak is a small, accurate description of how the schedule stopped. It is not a description of where the team went.

Toronto scored 648 runs over 162 games, with 4 runs per game, a .247 batting average and a .691 OPS. The club hit 152 home runs. None of those figures can tell the entire story of a fall from the World Series, but they do not permit a comforting story about an offense that merely had bad timing, either.

The season was long enough to include encouraging swings and good afternoons. It was also long enough for those moments to be counted. They are already inside the totals. We cannot add them again as evidence that the finish was somehow better than fifth place.

That is the weary work of October after a season like this: letting the good memories remain good without asking them to change the record.

The final game had its own worth

Brandon Valenzuela homered off Brandon Williamson in the second, bringing Davis Schneider home. Toronto added runs in the third on Charles McAdoo’s sacrifice fly and Schneider’s groundout. McAdoo homered off Carson Spiers in the eighth.

Max Scherzer worked 7.0 innings, allowing one earned run and striking out seven. The Reds scored in the third on Carlos Jorge’s single off Scherzer. Paul Sewald and Mason Fluharty each worked 1.0 inning without an earned run charged.

That was a good game. It deserves to be called one without a sigh attached to every sentence. The Blue Jays scored five runs on five hits and held Cincinnati to one run. The players did the work in front of them.

The trouble is that the final game also makes such a neat picture. A Scherzer start, home runs, a comfortable score. It offers an ending a fan would happily take if endings were allowed to stand alone.

This one was attached to everything that came before it.

The view from here

Watching October baseball without Toronto is not proof that last year was a mistake or that Sunday meant nothing. It is proof that a season does not inherit its predecessor’s place in the postseason.

The club has no next game listed. Wednesday is an off-day, but there is no approaching Blue Jays matchup for which rest might help. There is only time to look at the distance between the 2025 World Series run and a fifth-place finish.

Maybe the sharpest part is how little can be done with the final win. We can remember Valenzuela’s homer. We can remember Scherzer pitching well. We can even let ourselves enjoy that Toronto closed with a victory.

Then we can turn on October baseball and find that the Blue Jays are not in it.

The standings have room for Sunday’s win. They have no room for what we hoped it would mean.