From down and out to ALCS: How Jays turned the corner

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The previous time the Blue Jays used the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend to publicly share the state of affairs was radically different.

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The tire tracks on the back of manager John Schneider were still fresh after GM Ross Atkins backed the bus over him, serving a heaping helping of blame for the losing and controversial wildcard sweep in Minnesota.

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The future of the franchise in general and Schneider specifically seemed very much in doubt on the 2023 holiday weekend.

Fast forward two years to Saturday and the Jays and their manager are in a vastly different place, enthusiastically preparing for the club’s first trip to the ALCS since 2016.

A team that was in a state of turmoil in October of 2023, licking its wounds after a last-place season in October 2024, now finds itself just four wins away from its third ever World Series appearance.

The next stage of that process gets underway on Sunday night against the Seattle Mariners, not so fresh off of their 15-inning epic odyssey of a Game 5 win over the Detroit Tigers back in the Pacific Northwest on Friday night/Saturday morning.

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By virtue of their top seed in the American League after a truly impressive 94-win season, the Jays hold the potentially valuable home-field advantage.

How they got here is somewhat remarkable, given the palpable turmoil on the holiday weekend 24 months earlier. It wasn’t always easy, bumps and bruises along the way, but that process is part of the attraction with this wildly popular team.

With that, on Saturday’s workout day in advance of the series opener, three key Jays personalities shared strong views on how the ship got pointed in the right direction.

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MANAGER SAYS LAST SEPTEMBER

Schneider believes that in the gloomy final month of a last-place season going nowhere, September 2024 was a critical fork in the road back.

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“This is going to sound funny, but last September,” Schneider replied when we asked him to pinpoint the return to respectability. “We were still playing and not where we wanted to be. I think (that month) gave us a chance to dive into some of the ways to get better as opposed to when the season ends not the way you wanted it to.”

That timing gave the team an opportunity to reflect and, rather than play out the string, refocus as well.

“I think that’s where it all started,” Schneider reiterated. “Being aligned with front office, staff, with players really kind of started then. I think we used that as an opportunity to self-evaluate.”

It also got the ball rolling.

“Going into spring training you could kind of feel it. You’re confident about the group. Confident about the work, the prep, the people we’ve added and you could kind of see it unfold in real time.”

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GAUSMAN SAYS OFF-SEASON

The almost always transparent Kevin Gausman has told us in the past that he was “pissed” following the disastrous 2024 season.  He wasn’t alone.

While the man who gets the ball for Game 1 of the ALCS o Sunday had a terrific September last year, he believes the hard talk in the off-season was key.

“Definitely the conversations we had, kind of looking inward at what we needed to change, what things we really thought were lacking,” Gausman said on Saturday when we posed the same question we did to Schneider.

“But honestly, the biggest thing was probably spring training. I just remember looking back, first week and a half … I was pretty fired-up looking at our team and what we could be.”

How so?

“I think we really just had confidence in ourselves and in the talent and knowing that older guys looking at some of these younger guys and saying they could really take it to the next level.”

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Speaking of which …

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ANOTHER SEPTEMBER VOTE

Besides his skilled versatility in the field, not only is Ernie Clement one of the revitalized success stories on this team, he offers an intelligent perspective of the turnaround.

“I think there was a mix of the older guys just being over losing and being like, ‘OK, we need to figure out a change,” Clement said of the September reckoning. “If we want to be a good team, we have to change something.’

“It was also the younger guys who might not have been able to play every day switching from a mindset of just being happy to be here and playing in the major leagues to let’s treat this as meaningful baseball.

“With that, we treated it as meaningful baseball and figured out what we needed to do to win baseball games.”

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This may be the underrated point of them all. Several of the players who saw way more reps in September than they would have on a competitive team were central characters in the turnaround.

“You’ve got to find a way to make it meaningful and I think guys like myself, Nathan Lukes, (Addison) Barger had some really good, really valuable playing time,” Clement said. “We figured out that if we want to be a part of this, we’ve got to figure out how to help.

“We had the opportunity to do that and we made the best of it.”

And here they are in baseball’s final four, a terrific season that feels far from done.

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