A decade after last AL East win, Blue Jays trying to repeat history

NEW YORK — A decade is an especially long time in baseball years so some of the details from the Toronto Blue Jays’ memorable 2015 season, like the four-game September series at Yankee Stadium that helped seal the AL East, are understandably hazy for DeMarlo Hale.

Then John Gibbons’ bench coach, now John Schneider’s associate manager, he recalls taking the first three games of that clash and Marcus Stroman returning from a knee injury to help sweep a Saturday doubleheader after rain postponed the Thursday opener. The Blue Jays arrived at the Bronx atop the division by 1½ games. After dropping the finale, they left up 3½, the Yankees getting no closer than 2½ the rest of the way.

“Yeah, I remember all that,” said Hale, “vaguely.”

Fresher in his mind are some of the parallels between the last Blue Jays team to win the AL East and the current club, which moved another step closer to its first divisional crown since then with a 7-1 Friday night that pushed them four games up on the Yankees. 

At a high level, both groups entered their seasons under similar circumstances — coming off a difficult year, facing longer-term headwinds, top executives on expiring contracts — and both took off after middling starts — the ’15 squad after Alex Anthopoulos’ epic trade deadline, the ’25 team surging more organically from late May onwards.

They’re very different teams, the former top-heavy centred around franchise icons Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion and 2015 AL MVP Josh Donaldson, one more balanced with mix and match complementing a core of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, George Springer and Alejandro Kirk.

Regardless, “the one thing that’s similar for me is the momentum” each team developed, said Hale. “I felt back a couple of months, around June, there was this momentum that was building and it was a good feeling. And that’s the same as in ’15, you felt that momentum.”

That momentum for the 2015 Blue Jays showed up as a 43-18 run to close out the season, while this season, it’s been a steady buildup since a season-changing series May 26-28 at Texas.

“Once you start to play good baseball and you start to do some of the little things, like first to third, at one point we were bunting and moving guys over, boom, we were getting people in, you could see the offence kind of come together,” said Hale. “I feel like the roles became identified early and accepted, whether we were pinch-hitting, lefty-righty. As a coach, you’re like, OK, now you’re asking a Myles Straw to come in and pinch-hit here, pitch-run there, you’re asking a Nathan Lukes to do this, the core guys are doing their thing and then kind of like ’15, the momentum was those other players started to play and respond at winning level. That’s the similarity.”

Friday’s win featured all the best traits of the 2025 club, from a relentless lineup chewing up Cam Schlittler for 40 pitches during a three-run first and 26 more in the second before he was mercifully pulled despite sitting 98-99 m.p.h., to strong defence exemplified by Ernie Clement’s pick of a Jose Caballero roller to end the third, to a dominant eight-inning outing from Kevin Gausman, looking every bit the guy to start the first game of a post-season series.

Lukes, part of the player mix being so well utilized by the club, delivered a pivotal two-run single in the first that made the game 3-0 after Bichette got the offence rolling with a run-scoring double earlier in the inning.

Unlike the 2015 team, several key players on the current club have been through meaningful September series like this one before, with the Blue Jays notably sweeping a four-game set at Yankee Stadium in 2021, when they fell one agonizing game short of the playoffs. Along with the wild-card seasons of 2022 and ’23, that’s given them plenty of experience to draw from for the current set.

“I understand that there is a bigger intensity that you have to bring and I’m meshing that with also keeping it just kind of like a normal game and going out there and competing. You definitely have to match the intensity but at the same time, it really is just another game,” said Bichette. “Keeping the heart rate low is big. The desire to want to do something special or be the hero, whatever it is, controlling that and being in the moment is the biggest thing. Being in the moment is everything in this game, no matter when you play. But it becomes more of a skill that you learn to perfect at this time, for sure.”

The Blue Jays did that in a big way throughout the opener Friday, just as they did in the opener a decade back, which they won 11-5 with David Price on the mound. That series helped them tighten their grip on a division they never relinquished and 10 years on, they’re trying to make history repeat itself.

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