Blue Jays Navigating Intense Playoff Race in MLB's Most Crowded Division
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The All-Star Break is done and the Toronto Blue Jays would be in the playoffs if the season ended today. But it doesn't, and their division race is tight.
The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox are hot on their tails in the American League East Division, as they both have 53 wins. The Blue Jays are 55-41, which puts them two games ahead in the division race. It is the Red Sox that may be more of a concern for the Jays.
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The Blue Jays recently had one of the best winning streaks in the Majors this season, one that lasted 10 wins. At the time Toronto was one of two teams to have a double-digit win streak in 2025 — until Boston.
The Red Sox enter the second half on a 10-game winning streak and took advantage of lesser opponents during that stretch, including the Washington Nationals and the Colorado Rockies. It was the perfect time for Boston to get rolling.
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The Tampa Bay Rays sit in fourth in the division and have also reached 50 wins. They are only 5.5 games behind the Blue Jays and 1.5 games back of the final wild card berth. Of the three spots in the American League, the East owns two of them.
Consider this. The Rays are 5.5 games back. In the other divisions the average games back for the fourth-place team is 10.5 games.
Plus, only two of the other divisions have more than two teams with more than 50 wins while the AL East has four. Even the Baltimore Orioles, who sit in last place by 11.5 games are closer than the other last-place teams.
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On average a last place team in the division is 22.5 games behind. If you take out the outlier — the Rockies, who are 30 games back — it is still an average of 19.6 games.
The two-game lead the Blue Jays have in the division race is also well-below average compared to the other divisions. The other divisions leaders have a five-game lead, on average.
The Jays will face off with two playoff contenders after the break — the San Francisco Giants, followed by the Yankees. Both series will both be at Rogers Centre in Toronto where they are 32-16. It gives Toronto a chance to create some distance in the AL East race.
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Maddy Dickens resides in Loveland, Colorado. She grew up with two older brothers, where their lives revolved around sports. She earned a master's degree in business management from Tarleton State University while simultaneously playing basketball and competing in rodeo at the collegiate level. She successfully parlayed a reserve national championship into a professional rodeo career and now stays involved in upper-level athletics by writing for On SI on several different MLB teams' pages, along with some NCAA sites.