BOSTON -- Finally, it’s time for the series everyone’s had circled in red.
Fresh off a blowout loss Saturday at Fenway Park, the Blue Jays bounced back with a 5-3 win Sunday to take the series from the Red Sox, which sets a grand stage for Monday back home in Toronto.
The rest of the win didn’t carry the same beauty as the back-to-back home runs from Addison Barger and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the first inning, but it doesn’t matter now. The 45-38 Blue Jays are rolling into July with a legitimate chance to make a run at the AL East, not just another run at the third Wild Card spot, and this four-game set against the Yankees looks like the biggest series of the season ... so far.
“It’s still June going into July, but that’s a big series,” manager John Schneider said. “You get four against the team that’s leading the division and they’re good. They’re a tough, tough matchup every single time, no matter who’s on the mound. I think this is an important series for a lot of different reasons and it’s nice to have Max Scherzer on the mound tomorrow.”
Imperfections aside, Schneider was thrilled with how the Blue Jays bounced back from “getting their asses kicked” Saturday, as he put it. It’s games like Friday and Sunday that he feels tell the truth about this team.
Sunday’s scoreboard leaves the Blue Jays three games back of the Yankees in the AL East with the Rays right in between them, 1 1/2 games back. The Blue Jays and Rays currently represent the top two Wild Card teams, too, so the path to the postseason is going to run through this division like it always does.
The Blue Jays have spent the past month-plus shaking themselves from the magnetic draw of .500. While that’s happened, the Leafs crashed out of the NHL playoffs and the Stanley Cup was lifted once again. The NBA season is a wrap, too. School’s out for the summer. The entire Canadian market is sitting right there, waiting for the Blue Jays to be the first segment on every sports talk show, the first conversation at the office at 9 a.m. each morning.
If that’s going to happen, it all starts with four games against the Yankees. The series should bring massive crowds, all packed around the Canada Day holiday as the calendar flips to July, the month of the Trade Deadline.
There’s something about this team that is capturing people again, too. For 20-plus years, the Blue Jays tried to recapture the magic of those World Series years until the 2015-’16 squads rolled around, a collection of veterans as capable of winning a barroom brawl as they were winning a series. This 2025 squad doesn’t have that edge -- perhaps no team in baseball does -- but something about them seems to be reaching a fan base that’s spent the past decade searching for that connection again.
“We’ve just gotten really close. There’s no cliques on our team. There’s no separation,” said Ernie Clement, one the Blue Jays’ surprise stars. “Everybody is pulling in the same direction. We truly care about each other. I think that is a strong bond. That’s what the really, really good teams and the great teams do. They play for each other.”
That starts at the top with Vladdy and the veterans. One pitch after Barger’s blast in the first, Guerrero launched another of his Fenway classics, a high, soaring home run over the Green Monster. Guerrero is the Blue Jays’ most explosive, entertaining player on the field, but the moment he steps off, he’s this team’s sense of calm.
“To be honest with you, I’m not thinking about the second half,” Guerrero Jr. said through a club interpreter. “The way I see it for myself and my team, we need to take this day to day. For example, if we win tonight, it’s over and we need to start thinking about tomorrow. As a team, we’re doing that.”
After this weekend in Boston, tomorrow’s worth thinking about. Even though the Blue Jays cleared the halfway point of the season a couple of days ago, this series against the Yankees represents the beginning of the rest of their story, which is one they’ll have a hand in telling.