Markedly improved Blue Jays close out first half with blowout win over Red Sox

BOSTON — Friday night, sometime around 8:00 p.m. ET, give or take, the 2025 MLB regular season crossed its halfway mark.

Through 81 games last season, the Toronto Blue Jays were 38-43 with a minus-36 run differential, sitting dead last in the AL East — 13 games out of first — and a half-dozen back of the third wild-card spot. Toronto’s offence was bottom-five across MLB in runs scored, and its pitching staff had a bottom-10 ERA at 4.14. Only one Blue Jay — Daulton Varsho — had an fWAR above 1.7.

A year later? Toronto is 44-37 with a plus-8 run differential, good for third place in the AL East — three games back of first — with a two-game cushion in the second wild-card spot. The Blue Jays have been an above-average run-scoring team while their pitching staff has again worked to a 4.14 ERA. Four players — Alejandro Kirk, Ernie Clement, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Chris Bassitt — boast fWARs above 1.7. And the three position players are up over 2.0. 

Say what you want about the way the Blue Jays have gotten here, the competitiveness of the teams they share a division and league with, or how sustainable the team’s winning formula can be over the second half — they’ve markedly improved. And games like Friday’s 9-0 battering of the reeling Boston Red Sox gave clues as to how. 

Start with Jose Berrios, part of the three-headed roster bedrock atop Toronto’s rotation, who used his slurve brilliantly — both ball-to-strike and strike-to-ball — to keep Boston batters off balance over seven scoreless innings. 

Then think about an offence, which last season waited and waited and waited for the top of the lineup to rake until runway ran out, recording only three extra-base hits — all doubles, including one off a position player in garbage time — while using 13 singles, eight walks, and several instances of adroit baserunning to bleed Boston for nine runs.

And don’t forget a bullpen, which in 2024 became one of only three in the last decade to finish with -2.5 fWAR, that covered the game’s final two innings without incident, preserving higher-leverage arms for the remainder of the series. 

Steadfast starting pitching when needed. An offensive identity forged on situational hitting, tenacity with two strikes, and cunning baserunning. A revitalized relief corps. That right there’s why the Blue Jays have reversed their midway record from a year ago.

“I think we're playing good ball. Most importantly, regardless of if we win, if we lose, as a team, we flush that and we come in the next day and keep playing hard,” Guerrero said. “We trust each other. We understand that we have some key players out. But we believe in our nine players in the lineup.”

“I think it's so much easier when you're just worrying about the team and really trying to win games,” added Clement. “The individual performances just kind of take care of themselves when all you care about is winning. I just want what's best for this team. Truly, I really care about that.”

Friday’s runs came in a variety of ways. A late lineup addition after originally being out due to residual forearm soreness from a hit-by-pitch on Thursday, Guerrero singled in the first, stole second with a trademark belly flop slide, and evaded Connor Wong’s tag at home while scoring on a George Springer single to give the Blue Jays an early lead.

And Toronto extended it in each of the next two innings, as Clement’s leadoff walk came around on Andres Gimenez and Bo Bichette singles in the second, before Springer singled, stole second, and scored on a base hit — Clement again — in the third.  

Toronto’s offence couldn’t convert subsequent opportunities in the fifth and sixth, but Addison Barger’s leadoff double in the seventh — smoked into the right-centre field alley at 111-m.p.h., the second-hardest hit ball of the night — was cashed by a Kirk double behind him for a fourth run. Four batters later, Gimenez drew a bases-loaded walk to cash another.

“We were just taking our hits,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “A couple stolen bases from Vlad and George leads to a couple more runs. We played good defence, a couple of huge double plays from Jose. And you get big hits. That's the little things. It was really everybody. George stands out, [Gimenez] stands out, Kirky stands out. But I think everyone was doing their part. It was just a really clean game.”

A string of eighth-inning walks and singles brought in four more runs Berrios didn’t need, as the right-hander was at his poised, efficient best while painting all quadrants of the zone. His removal from the game after throwing 91 pitches over seven innings was only necessary due to the boat-racing it became.  

Berrios leaned heavily on his slurve, throwing it over a third of the time and earning 10 whiffs on 18 swings. That he located only 38 per cent of his slurves in the zone, yet earned a swing or called strike on 72 per cent of them, says all you need to know about the pitch’s effectiveness Friday night.

“Yeah, he had it working,” Schneider said. “Cutter was really good, too. That's a pitch that he's gaining more and more confidence in as the season goes. But the breaking ball was nasty. Landing it for strikes, getting chases with it. When he's doing that, he's pretty good.”

Berrios has hit his rough spots throughout the season, particularly in May when he was battling through physical issues, but he’s now allowed one run or fewer in five of his last six starts. And he’s owned the Red Sox in particular, pitching to a 1.31 ERA over 20.2 innings with 18 strikeouts against five walks across three outings this season. 

“Sometimes it's tough because the more they see me, the more they know me. But that's why we love this game. We have to make adjustments every day,” Berrios said. “We know what their weaknesses are, but also they know where we're going to attack them. So, sometimes they're looking for it. And when we see it, we need to change the plan. And we did that. Kirky and I saw that and we adjusted the plan during the game and had good success.”

Now, MLB’s 2025 season has thus far been one of remarkable parity. Only the Los Angeles Dodgers and Detroit Tigers entered Friday’s action on pace to win over 96 games, each playing at a 101-win clip. And they’re both part of an 18-team field playing .500 baseball or better, tied for the most ever through the halfway point of a season.

The Blue Jays have no doubt benefited from these circumstances. The club’s currently playing at an 87-win pace, which would have only barely qualified them for a wild-card spot last season and fallen short of the cut-off the one prior, but this year puts them 3.5 games clear of missing out on October. 

And yet, to chalk Toronto’s successful first-half entirely up to the American League’s flattening competitiveness would shortchange the considerable strides the club has made in its lineup depth, bullpen quality, and ability to win games without over-reliance on home runs.

Those internal improvements have been critical to Toronto completing the first half of this marathon closer to the front of the pack than the back. What is fair to point out is how the Blue Jays haven’t arrived here the way they envisioned when the season began. 

Anthony Santander, signed to provide much-needed power from the heart of the lineup, has produced a .577 OPS over his first 50 games and hasn’t swung a bat since hitting the injured list a month ago. 

Gimenez, acquired with the belief he could rediscover an approximation of the offensive upside demonstrated during his stellar 2022 and assigned to bat cleanup in his first dozen starts, has declined even further than he did over the last two seasons and carries a 64 OPS+ through late June.

Will Wagner and Alan Roden, both in the opening day lineup, were demoted by May. Richard Lovelady and Jacob Barnes lasted only into early April. Max Scherzer, the club’s biggest off-season pitching addition, was lost after three innings.

Welcome to a baseball season. Things fall apart. Yet, the difference between this year and last is that when inevitable calamity has occurred, the club’s been able to backfill and mitigate the damage.

“The guys that are in the lineup are playing their tails off,” Clement said. “It's a different guy every night. It's a full, complete team right now. And it's how baseball should be played. That's how winning baseball is played.”

Springer and Kirk have taken turns carrying the offensive weight Santander was originally assigned. Clement — who set a career high reaching base five times on Friday — has raised his offensive level to match his defensive one in the way Toronto predicted Gimenez could. Barger and Nathan Lukes have been the internal players taking meaningful steps in Roden and Wagner’s place.

Brendon Little and Yariel Rodriguez have been bullpen revelations, while Mason Fluharty, Braydon Fisher and Paxton Schultz have provided critical backfill from Buffalo, papering over Yimi Garcia’s absence, Erik Swanson’s crash-out, and Chad Green’s unreliability.  

The starting rotation’s back end is the one problem area the Blue Jays haven’t been able to cover for, yet the team was able to navigate its way through a series of mostly successful bullpen days to reach a point now where it has five legitimate starters it plans to roll on turn throughout its current 16-games-in-16-days stretch.

“You kind of forget that we haven't had Varsh, we haven't had Tony, we haven't had Max, we haven't had Yimi for a while,” Schneider said. “You forget about it because [depth players] are playing well. Everyone's being the best version of themselves. And that builds character. That builds team unity. And I think that's a real thing.”