Blue Jays’ improbable 2015 season defies imagination

The Toronto Blue Jays made the call to be buyers at the trade deadline and made good on their huge potential, but now the real work begins with playoffs on the horizon.

This all started six months ago, and it seemed impossible. It reached a near climax on Wednesday night, and how this team arrived at this place seems even more unlikely, if that’s imaginable.

The Toronto Blue Jays roll into Baltimore and ride Marcus Stroman for eight innings to clinch the AL East? Did anyone think that was going to happen when his knee crumpled in spring training?

Or how about Jose Bautista sticking it to the hated Orioles one more time, hitting his 40th home run in the ninth inning to help cap a 15-2 humiliation?

Did anyone see that when Bautista was taking cortisone injections in his throwing shoulder and struggling as a DH for a team that was 23-30 on June 2?

That the Blue Jays have won their division and are in the driver’s seat to have the best record in the American League is upside-down crazy. But the way they’ve done it defies imagination, or at least the kind that is peyote free.

As Alex Anthopoulos said as he kicked off the Blue Jays’ champagne-soaked celebration: “Congratulations on an unf#&*ing believable year.”

Remember? Six months ago, the Toronto Blue Jays stepped into Yankee Stadium with a 20-year-old closer not named Roberto Osuna, a kid from Mississauga with 39 MLB at-bats to his name in centre, Devon Travis at second and Jose Reyes calcifying before everyone’s eyes at shortstop.

There was some hope that the off-season investments in Russell Martin and Josh Donaldson could help the Blue Jays break their 22-year playoff drought, but it was the kind of hope that is offered cautiously. It was the slim kind.

Sure, Donaldson and Martin were key additions, but the Blue Jays would only go as far as starters Drew Hutchison, Daniel Norris and Aaron Sanchez could take them.

You see where I’m going here?

Even that was predicated on the only thing that seemed assured way back in April: that the American League East was a shell of it’s former self, and an 86- or 87-win season might be enough to win it by default.

This season, this incredible, unlikely, out-of-nowhere miracle of a season, has been made possible by a perfect alignment of stars, with free-agent-to-be general manager Anthopoulos calibrating everything with a sextant blessed by Midas.

And luck. Incredible, blind, impossible-to-predict luck.

Consider: the Blue Jays’ fortunes are thought to have turned around with the arrival of Troy Tulowitzki and LaTroy Hawkins from Colorado.

The record says so. The Blue Jays have gone 69-36 since their low ebb, which translates to a 106-win pace over 162 games. They have gone an even-more-amazing 42-14 since they began their mid-season makeover, making up 14 games on the New York Yankees and pushing past the Kansas City Royals for the best record in the American League.

But they’ve done it with Tulowitzki hitting just .232 in his 39 games with the Blue Jays, and by going 10-6 and sealing the division since he fractured his shoulder, knocking him out of the lineup. Naturally, he’s poised to return to the field two weeks earlier than previously thought and if this season keeps playing out the way it has, he’ll go on a tear in the playoffs.

Hawkins, nursing a sore arm, pitched just four times in September.

It hasn’t mattered. David Price and Stroman have combined to go 12-1 since Aug. 3. All glove, no bat infielder Ryan Goins has had an .885 OPS in August. Edwin Encarnacion got hot, Bautista has been on fire and Donaldson has played third base like a superhero.

Everything the Blue Jays have touched this season has turned out almost perfectly, it seems. This is a team on which Chris Colabello and Justin Smoak have combined to hit 31 home runs, drive in 110 runs, while Liam Hendriks and Bo Schultz came out of nowhere to chalk up 102 strikeouts in 105 innings before last night.

Oh, and Marco Estrada, who gave up more home runs than any pitcher in baseball a year ago, came out of the bullpen to become one of the best starting pitchers in the American League.

When the Blue Jays went to spring training, the feeling was that nearly everything would have to go right for them to have a chance to compete for the playoffs. And that was before Michael Saunders, the expected starter in left field stepped on a sprinkler and ended his season. Before Stroman, the likely opening-day starter, tore his knee to shreds doing fielding drills. Hutchison, who did start on opening day, never found his groove and Pompey, the opening-day centre fielder, had to go down to double-A to find his. Travis was an early-season bright spot until his season was effectively ended in June.

The Blue Jays did get an incredible season from a 20-year-old reliever, but it wasn’t from Miguel Castro, and they are very likely to begin the post-season without Mark Buehrle in their starting rotation.

None of these things could have been predicted. It’s the season that came out of nowhere.

The Blue Jays have won two World Series and five AL East crowns in their history. But they have never had a season like this one. How many teams ever have?

When submitting content, please abide by our submission guidelines, and avoid posting profanity, personal attacks or harassment. Should you violate our submissions guidelines, we reserve the right to remove your comments and block your account. Sportsnet reserves the right to close a story’s comment section at any time.