TORONTO – Before Joe Carter touched them all after his swing secured a second straight World Series title, a moment now immortalized with a statue outside Rogers Centre, general manager Pat Gillick tore up his championship roster.
Gone from the 1992 team that finally pushed the franchise to the pinnacle were Dave Winfield, Jimmy Key, David Cone, Tom Henke, David Wells, Candy Maldonado, Kelly Gruber and Manny Lee, among others. Replacing them were Paul Molitor, Dave Stewart, Darrin Jackson, Darnell Coles, Dick Schofield, Danny Cox and Tony Castillo, with Pat Hentgen, John Olerud and Ed Sprague growing into major roles.
The amount of turnover left Gillick uncertain heading into the 1993 season. As the legacy of those championships was feted with Saturday’s monument unveiling, the Hall of Fame executive said, “I had my fingers crossed on the second team.”
“In '92, I thought we had a really good team. In ’93, because we had let so many players go after the '92 season, I had my doubts that we'd get back,” he said from a suite overlooking the action as the Blue Jays beat the Chicago White Sox 1-0. “So it was not a surprise, but it was a feeling that we were kind of lucky in '93 because the number of players that we did lose. Key was gone, Henke was gone. Cone was gone. That's two-thirds of your starting staff (and a closer). You've got to replace them, so you're always apprehensive (about whether) you're able to do that.”
He did, of course, and Gillick’s manager, Cito Gaston, believes the 1993 team might have been even better than the one before it. Either way, the Blue Jays became the first back-to-back champions since the 1977-78 Yankees, and the challenge they faced in repeating then is akin to the one before the 2026 group, which is seeking a return engagement in the World Series and the one extra win they lacked a year ago.
At 46-52 in a frustrating season marred by injury and underperformance, the difficulty of what the team did then isn’t lost on the team now.
“To win one World Series, it’s very hard. Super hard,” Vladimir Guerrero Jr. said through interpreter Hector Lebron. “I can't imagine going back-to-back; it's just an incredible achievement. But we'll figure it out. We’re trying to win one.”
Pivotal to that second championship team was the addition of Molitor, a future Hall-of-Famer who had been to the World Series early in his career, with the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers, losing in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals, but not back since.
Carter remembers how on opening day, “we got our rings and there was Molitor standing in the dugout just like, ‘Wow.’ We felt that, and it was like, hey, let's go out, let's win one for Molitor because this is an opportunity, let's do something that hadn't been done since (1977-78), so we had a mission, and it was to go back-to-back and win one for Molitor. We never lost sight of that. We put everything else aside, no individual awards, anything like that; it was one-for-all, all-for-one, pushing everything for Molitor. I was so happy we were able to get him one.”
“These guys were playing for him. Oh boy, did he step up, too,” agreed Gaston. “I didn't have to do much. I just said, ‘Remember Paul.’ And they played their butts off. Paul finished second in the league in hitting, and we outscored people that year. … It's hard to repeat because people don't want to go through all that pain and being away from your family all the time. So it's tough, but I think we switched just enough to come back and repeat.”
This current version of the Blue Jays did plenty of switching up, too, with Bo Bichette, Chris Bassitt and Seranthony Domínguez the most notable departures and Dylan Cease, Kazuma Okamoto, Cody Ponce and Tyler Rogers the prime additions. The major difference between the 1993 and 2026 clubs thus far is health, as this year’s group has worked through a constant churn of players that started when Ponce blew out his knee in the fourth game of the year. They’ve had 21 injured-list stints for 19 different players, forcing them into tertiary layers of depth and beyond.
“Losing (Alejandro) Kirk for a while behind the plate, that hurt them, I think. He still hasn't got going,” said Gillick. “And anytime you shorten the pitching staff, you always seem to run into problems. Hopefully they'll pull out of it and make a run in the second half.”
That remains the Blue Jays’ goal, and the morass of the American League has helped keep that in play, although the impact of each win or loss on their playoff probabilities, standing at 18.5 per cent after Saturday’s win per Fangraphs, increases as the runway shrinks.
Still, after watching the Blue Jays “literally lose a championship by inches” last fall, Molitor sees opportunity in an open league.
“I think that they're hanging on to the hope that things are going to get better, maybe offensively, with consistency and health in the starting rotation,” he said. “My advice is just keep playing the game. You have a good week or two, and all of a sudden the standings look a lot different.”
The Aug. 3 trade deadline, however, means that a good stretch needs to come soon, as the Blue Jays need to take advantage of the summer’s annual talent redistribution period one way or another.
Playing well is the simplest path, as it allows GM Ross Atkins to bolster his club without much hesitation. But if they play poorly, it would be irresponsible not to leverage the club’s expiring assets to help patch the organization’s foundation so that better teams can be built for 2027 and beyond.
In that way, these Blue Jays are trying to avoid ending up like the 1994 club, which still had the talented nucleus from a year previous and strong young players in Carlos Delgado, Shawn Green and Alex Gonzalez, who touched the majors on the way, but not enough to really compete. An injury to closer Duane Ward discombobulated the bullpen; starters Stewart, Juan Guzman and Al Leiter all had ERAs that started with a five, and the lineup wasn’t deep enough to compensate.
They were in third place at 55-60, well back in both the AL East and wild-card races, when the players who eventually led to the season’s cancellation arrived.
“Well, '94 was a strange year,” said Molitor. “We all knew that labour issues were looming and things finally came to a head there. ... We just weren't able to have that same type of day-in and day-out chemistry that we had the previous years. Not due to leadership or anything, we just didn't play as well.”
Added Gillick: “I thought we were fortunate in 1993 and we didn't have the same personnel in '94. It was one of those years you could expect anything to happen. It turned out it wasn't a very good year.”
Those Blue Jays didn’t get the chance to change their fate, something that’s still ahead for this group. The way Guerrero has swung the bat over the past couple of weeks and Bieber throwing six shutout innings against an aggressive and damage-capable White Sox lineup are a couple of elements that need to fall into place.
“I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses for them, but they have been hurt,” said Gaston. “When we won, we stayed healthy. The kid in right field (Addison Barger) is not here, that hurts. Pitching staff hasn't pitched like they should have or they could have. ... They're not hitting, they are not pitching well. And you what? They're still 3 1/2 games out of the wildcard. So don't count them out yet. You never know.”
Carter, who ended the first World Series title with the ball in his glove, the second with a ball off his bat, will now connect generations in a new way with a statue of his celebration after taking Mitch Williams deep, standing by the southeast corner of Rogers Centre.
“When I go to that clubhouse, I'm talking to the guys and bringing a lot of fun and excitement and cheering those guys on because to me, we're still teammates,” he said. “When Vlad came out and gave me the home run jacket, I mean, I was ready to put the uniform on and go hit. I could probably hit. I can't run. But I could probably still hit. We're all intertwined together, and what they did last year was great. But now they have to get to that next step because second place is not good enough.”
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