From last place to the post-season? Here's how the 2026 Blue Jays could pull it off

Prime Minister Mark Carney says "you've got to believe" the Toronto Blue Jays can still make the playoffs. But can they, really?

The Jays have played some scrappy baseball lately, as the team finds itself on the fringes of playoff contention with a quarter of the season to go and it's still possible they might find a way to the post-season in the anemic American League.

Toronto beat the Boston Red Sox tonight, in a 5-3 victory that improved their season record to 58-63 and kept the team in the hunt for a potential playoff spot.

Thanks for the sweater, Karla.<br> <br>My message to Jays Nation: you've got to believe. <a href="https://t.co/oP6IQ9dHmJ">pic.twitter.com/oP6IQ9dHmJ</a>

"At this point, you just kind of throw everything other than winning out the window and show up every day and try to win," Jays infielder and all-star Ernie Clement told CBC News, earlier Tuesday.

There are a half-dozen teams, including Toronto, that are within four games of the last wild-card spot in the wider American League — and the Blue Jays would have to leap past all of them to secure a return to the post-season.

Here's a look at why the Jays are where they are with just over 40 games to go, and what they have to do to get back to the post-season.

That's the reality: Toronto has gone from a team that competed for a World Series title last fall to a team curently sitting in last place in the American League East.

They can't win the division at this point, so that means they'll have to claim a wild-card spot to reach the post-season.

The win over Boston Tuesday night improved Toronto's season record to 58-63 — 12 fewer wins than they had at the same point last year.

At present, the Tampa Bay Rays lead the AL East, followed by the New York Yankees in second place, and the resurgent Boston Red Sox — who put together lengthy win streaks in July and August — in third.

The Baltimore Orioles (with a 58-62 record) and the Jays sit in fourth and fifth place.

According to Elias Sports Bureau, the official statistician of Major League Baseball (MLB), there are just two teams that have stood at 58-63 through 121 games — the same record the Jays have right now — that went on to make the playoffs in the wild-card era: The 2024 Detroit Tigers and the 2009 Minnesota Twins.

Randy Robles of Elias Sports Bureau believes "there's some hope" for the Jays, noting that if there ever was a year for a struggling team to still have a chance, it would be this one, when so many American League teams have been playing so poorly.