The Toronto Blue Jays have 72 games to straighten out an offence that has gone flat at exactly the wrong time.
They’re six games under .500, sitting with an average rotation, a solid bullpen and enough top-end pitching to matter in October. Louis Varland has settled the ninth inning.
But the lineup has been the real problem, and over the last 24 innings it has gone scoreless. That’s the issue hanging over everything else.
Manager John Schneider didn’t dress it up.
“We got to flip it,” Schneider said. “It’s something we talk about, something we’re grinding on, but you got to go out and do it.”
The fix sounds obvious enough: score more, drive the ball, hit homers, start stacking wins. But Toronto’s bigger problem is the hardest thing to find in modern baseball - power. That’s the trait teams spend big money chasing, the one pitchers spend their whole careers trying to neutralize.
What makes this so frustrating for the Blue Jays is that the power should already be in the room.
The coaching staff is basically the same. The lineup is mostly the same.
The supporting cast - Ernie Clement, Nathan Lukes and Andrés Giménez - has held its own, with OPS marks at or above where they were in 2025. Those bats aren’t carrying the offence, but they’re not the reason it has stalled.
Kazuma Okamoto, meanwhile, has done a respectable job replacing Bo Bichette’s production, at least in the sense that his OPS is in a similar range and he has real pop.
The drop-off has come from the core.
Toronto went from a top-five lineup by wRC+ last season to one that now sits 22nd. The hitters who powered the club a year ago were supposed to do it again, and that hasn’t happened.
Daulton Varsho is on pace for 13 home runs after hitting 20 in only 71 games last year. George Springer is on pace for 14.
Alejandro Kirk and Addison Barger have missed most of the season after putting up 15 and 21 homers, respectively, in 2025. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is on pace for just seven home runs, 16 fewer than last season and the fewest of his career.
That’s the kind of collapse that drags a lineup down fast.
“I think when you look up at like Varsh, Kirky, Vlad, obviously, and George, you need some more slug out of those guys,” Schneider said. “They’re being pitched differently, and I think you can’t let it fester and carry over and bleed into the next day. They gotta get some pitches to hit them hard.”
Schneider has been direct about the source of the issue. The Blue Jays can add a corner outfielder in August, and Sean Keys can come up later, but neither move changes the fact that Toronto needs Guerrero, Springer and the rest of its core bats to carry the offence.
And it’s not just the home run total. Guerrero, Varsho, Springer and Kirk have all seen their OPS+ fall by at least 20 points, turning four players who were performing at an All-Star level into below-average hitters. Injuries have made the lineup thinner for stretches, too.
The Jays have also spent much of the year trying to solve the league’s response to their 2025 approach. Last season, Toronto’s contact-heavy, relentless style helped push the team to the brink of a World Series title.
This year, opponents came in with a plan. Fewer pitches have been landing in the middle of the zone.
Fewer at-bats have started with four-seam fastballs. With two strikes, pitchers have shown different looks entirely.
Toronto has been trying to force pitchers back into the heart of the plate.
“Just really trying to stay in the middle of the zone as long as you can until two strikes,” Schneider said, “then use your contact ability.”
There have been a few signs that something is starting to stir. Springer has five extra-base hits in his last 17 games.
Kirk is back after a three-month absence, though he’s still searching for rhythm. Guerrero followed the worst offensive month of his career - a .498 OPS in June - with a hard line drive on Canada Day that skipped into the corner and sent the first baseman sliding into second.
Still, Toronto needs more than hints.
The 2025 club didn’t live and die by the home run. It finished with the 11th-most homers and had only 34.2 percent of its hits go for extra bases, which ranked 18th in MLB. But this year’s group needs more impact than it’s getting now.
On July 1, the crowd at Rogers Centre made that point for Guerrero. After his first-inning double, 41,000 fans started chanting his name. It began with a few voices and spread until the whole stadium was in on it: “Vladdy, Vladdy, Vladdy.”
“Kind of reminded me of Trea Turner in Philly a few years ago, when he was kind of going through it,” Schneider said. “The fans just said, ‘We got you.’
So he hears that. We hear it.”
The fans were hoping for Guerrero’s first homer at Rogers Centre to finish off the blowout win. It never came. But the expectation is clear: Guerrero, Varsho, Springer, Kirk and the rest of the core have to find that swing again.
Guerrero, as he told reporters in Seattle, is opting out of the All-Star Game to rest his back. He’ll spend the second half trying to get his timing back.
“Slug fixes a lot,” Schneider said.
If Toronto falls short, there will be plenty of debate about what went wrong and which small decisions might have nudged the season in a different direction. But the immediate answer is staring them in the face. The Blue Jays have 72 games left for their biggest bats to wake up and give this offence some life.
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