Deadline adds, strong second half fuelled ’15 Jays to playoffs, can ’26 team do same?

TORONTO — The memorable 2015 Toronto Blue Jays team was in a similar position to the current squad as the trade deadline approached that year.

A roster that boasted franchise legends like Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson and Edwin Encarnacion endured a mediocre first half before a strong 60-game run to end the season led to a division title and ended a 22-year playoff drought.

The 2026 Blue Jays are hoping to follow the same path back to the post-season this year. To do it, they’ll need a big uptick in their offence and improved defensive play.

“I look at it on paper and I go, ‘What do you do well every day?” Donaldson said of this year’s squad. “There’s not one thing to me that sticks out about this team.”

Donaldson, the American League MVP in 2015, helped anchor an offence that year with plenty of thump. This year’s team, he said, has a better rotation but is much quieter at the plate.

“They’ve got to get hot at some point, they have to,” said former catcher Russell Martin, who hit 23 homers for Toronto in 2015. “They’ve got to go on a run.”

Easier said than done of course, especially for a team that has only shown flashes of the stellar play that led to a World Series appearance last year.

The Blue Jays’ offence has looked better in recent days, however. Toronto will enter Friday’s series opener at San Diego on a high after back-to-back blowout wins over the San Francisco Giants.

Despite a 44-49 record, the Blue Jays are only 2 1/2 games out of a wild-card spot entering Thursday’s games.

The 2015 team was also under .500 in July before going on a tear in August.

Fuelled by trade-deadline acquisitions David Price and Troy Tulowitzki, Toronto used an 11-game win streak to get back in the hunt and closed the year on a 43-18 run.

“The two teams are totally built differently,” said Donaldson, who co-hosts the “Get It Done League” baseball podcast with Martin and broadcaster Arash Madani. “I mean our team in 2015, we were out-slugging teams. That’s how we were winning games.

“This team is not anywhere near the level of the 2015 lineup that we had at that time. So at that all-star break, we knew that we just needed to get some pitching.”

A big bat could be on top of the list this time around. With a top-five team payroll, general manager Ross Atkins may be pressured to jolt the lineup the way his predecessor Alex Anthopoulos did 11 years ago.

The trade deadline is Aug. 3.

Donaldson, who led the 2015 team with 41 homers, was one of six different Toronto players to hit at least 15 home runs that season. Bautista was right behind him with 40 homers and Encarnacion had 39.

Kazuma Okamoto leads the 2026 squad with 21 homers, the lone Blue Jay to reach double digits in the category after 93 games. On the pitching side, all-star Dylan Cease has become the No. 1 option in a rotation that’s also led by Kevin Gausman and Trey Yesavage.

The addition of Price in 2015 gave the Blue Jays an ace-like option in a rotation that was also boosted by Marcus Stroman’s return from injury that September.

Team power still won the day as the offence propelled the Blue Jays — with Bautista’s famous bat flip providing one of many highlights — to the American League Championship Series.

This year, injuries and underperformance have been two big factors in Toronto’s downturn from the high of last fall.

“I don’t think they’ve been rolling on all cylinders at any point this season,” Martin said in a recent interview. “They need their guys who came in and helped last year to stay on the field, get healthy and then have an impact.”

Toronto’s offence was led by players like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., George Springer, Bo Bichette and Addison Barger last season. Guerrero and Springer have seen significant dips in their production, Barger is hurt and Bichette signed with the New York Mets as a free agent.

The Blue Jays entered Thursday’s games sitting 27th in the 30-team major leagues in OPS (.688), 26th in slugging (.383) and tied for 27th in on-base percentage (.305).

Toronto currently has a 30.3-per cent chance of making the playoffs, per FanGraphs.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 9, 2026.

Gregory Strong, The Canadian Press