Torontonians jump on the Blue Jays bandwagon as team leads the AL East in the final stretch

The Blue Jays are leading their divisional rivals as the baseball season enters its final regular-season stretch, giving the team a chance to claim a leading playoff spot for the first time in a decade.

But there's still a lot of baseball to play, and the team will have to fight their way through 34 more games before the playoffs begin.

Currently, the Blue Jays sit in first place in the American League East, with the Red Sox and Yankees trailing Toronto.

If Toronto can stay ahead of those rivals, the club could be looking at its first division title since 2015, meaning they would make the playoffs without having to qualify for a wildcard spot.

For playoff-hungry Toronto baseball fans, the time to jump on the bandwagon has come.

Ahead of Sunday's game, Toronto's win-loss record stood at 76-54.

That puts them slightly ahead of the pace of the José Bautista-led Jays squad of 2015, which was at 72-56 through the same number of games.

The Jays won games at a torrid pace as that season closed and went on to win the division title, though they eventually lost the American League Championship Series to the Kansas City Royals, who became World Series champs.

Likewise, the Blue Jays were at 70-58 through 128 games in the 2022 season; and at 67-61 the year before.

Both of those teams won at least 20 games more than they lost.

As a team, the Jays have the highest batting average in all of Major League Baseball. They also have the highest on-base percentage.

Toronto Star baseball columnist Mike Wilner agrees that this a team with serious depth on its bench.

If Toronto can win half the remaining games, the team would end up with at least 90 wins a benchmark that, when reached, tends to result in a playoff berth.

(Though, as the 91-game-winning Blue Jays found out in 2021, that's not always the case.)

Veteran baseball writer Richard Griffin believes the Blue Jays have a "realistic" chance at making the playoffs, writing on Substack that a 90-win total is "a modest goal" for a team with strong camaraderie and the pitching talent needed to keep them competitive.

Wilner says that "no matter how good you are" during the regular season, the post-season is unpredictable.

Anything can happen, and that could lead to disappointment for fans who waited too long to start following the action if a potential playoff run ends up being short, which is why he says it's "well past time for people to get on the bandwagon."

And Jays fans are thirsting for some post-season success, having seen past rosters rapidly eliminated from the playoffs in 2020, 2022 and 2023.

Toronto hasn't had a deeper playoff run since the Blue Jays made it to the American League Championship Series, first in 2015 and again a year later.