BALTIMORE — That’s baseball. You’ve heard manager John Schneider say it hundreds of times this season, or at least one of his variations. Baseball happened. Baseball goes baseball. It’s their own version of “c’est la vie.” Hidden within that is everything that went wrong for the 2026 Blue Jays, who were mathematically, and perhaps fortunately, eliminated from postseason contention Wednesday in Baltimore. Those who live the baseball life, from players to coaches to team staff, learn to accept that much of this game exists outside of their control. There are injuries, bad rebounding, terrible seasons for star players, and another team trying to beat you every night. It’s about limiting how much of the game exists beyond your control, and in 2026, the Blue Jays left the barn doors wide open for baseball to come in and create its chaos. This game is a living, breathing thing that is prone to mood swings. A year ago, baseball was kind and gentle to the Blue Jays. We’ve seen what it looks like when everything goes right and now what it looks like when everything goes wrong. There’s the old saying that every team wins a third of their games and loses a third, and it’s the other third that decides their season. That third went from a masterpiece to a disaster. When Schneider has said this throughout the season, it has too often been interpreted as an excuse, but that’s not what it is. Great teams are built to weather the moods of baseball, built to have a second, third and fourth way to win games when the game itself decides to turn against them. Great teams can regain some control of the game, driving their own success and leaving less room for those year-to-year changes to determine their destiny. That’s how the 2025 Blue Jays crawled to the threshold of immortality in Game 7 of the World Series, but it’s also why the 2026 team has come up so painfully short. They allowed baseball to continue happening to them. This team entered the season with World Series expectations, because of course they did. The work put in during the offseason was also solid. Dylan Cease is a true ace, Tyler Rogers is a dream setup man, Kazuma Okamoto was one of the best value deals signed last winter and finding Rule 5 wonder Spencer Miles dollar for dollar may have been the move of the offseason. “When you have expectations of returning [to the World Series] and finish the job, it feels good to have the support of the fans to go out and try to do it,” Schneider said, “but it’s frustrating that we haven’t done our part.” How did this happen then? The Blue Jays, who are stumbling with a losing record, have one of the worst offenses in baseball, and it’s because they haven’t found other ways to win. This season has been a long, frustrating slump. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has hit just nine home runs, and in a lineup built for contact around Guerrero as the engine, this has sunk the Blue Jays. Last year’s team was able to find other ways to win, but this year’s team rarely felt like it could. “I have to learn a lot from this year,” Guerrero said through interpreter Héctor Lebron. “It’s a process. Especially when you go to the World Series, that was my goal again this year. You put that pressure on yourself, trying to get your team back to the World Series. It didn’t happen.” Great teams become undeniable, whether it’s superstars who take over games or a true team identity, which is so hard to find. Last year’s team had both, in a clear offensive identity and in Vladdy, whose postseason run was one of the best runs we’ve seen in Toronto. “Last year we showed we can play all the way to the World Series. This year we are not going to the playoffs. We didn’t achieve our goals,” said Max Scherzer. “It’s frustrating. Any word you want to say is fair.” Now, we’re left to remember how special 2025 was, fading an entire year in the rearview mirror. There may be no better feeling in sports, as a fan, than that of your baseball team making the postseason. It’s every night, a freight train of momentum that no other sport can offer. On the other hand, though, there are few things more frustrating than watching your team come up short… because it happens every night. Here’s what the other side looks like, from the top to the bottom of the mountain in just 11 months. That’s baseball.
