But in terms of John Schneider's trust in Brandon Little or how much confidence you can have in, in him on a day like today, has he moved the needle for you at all given how he's looked since he's come back up?

Yeah, I think, like, he's gone from basically a two-pitch pitcher to a four-pitch pitcher in the last couple months.

He's finally...

Like, the Jays in spring training wanted him to use a new four-seam fastball so badly, and he just...

Like, when he got sent down the first time, I was talking to him a couple weeks ago, he just didn't have confidence in that pitch.

It was just a bad pitch, and he just didn't use it, and he just forced himself to kind of power through.

Or I'm sure there was some, some other thumbs on the scale [chuckles] as well to power through down to Triple A and just throw it, throw it, throw it until he got it into a pretty good spot.

Um, weirdly, this gets simpler if they pull it off and make a wildcard series or an ALDS that has two off days, right?

We got-- We've used him three of the last four days." Like, do they have enough depth to be able to withstand how John Schneider's gonna have to deploy this bullpen because of all the things you said about the rotation of guys that maybe can't go too deep?

That's one of the things, like, I'm really interested to watch in the next couple weeks, because this team has basically been playing do or die baseball for three weeks already.

And so they've been using guys three days in a row.

They've been, they've been trotting Louie Varland out there a lot, and the offense doesn't give them a whole lot of opportunities to sit their closer down and not use him in games.

So they're pitching pretty often.

Can they do that for seven weeks? Can they do that into the first week of October? Like, y- you can play do or die baseball for a couple weeks for sure.

Every team does it in October.

Could they have done anything in the off-season to prevent all of the things that we've already talked about on today's show?

What has it been like to report on kind of a disappointing season in 2026?

Yeah.

It's, it's pretty different.

I think, like, on the day-to-day it's not that different in that you're showing up, you're covering baseball.

Like, things happen that you have to write about.

Like, big sto- you find stories that you write about.

But it's just, like, when you take a step back and look at last year and some of the work I'm, like, proudest of, it's, like, covering Drea Savage and, like, his rise and, like, getting really interesting deep dive stories on him.

Mm-hmm.

Do you remember questioning the Andrés Muños, Edward Bazardo pitching decisions like Mariners fans were in the moment?

No, but I...

Like, at that point of the playoffs, like, it was such a good series, and, like, you just knew that the Mariners had bullpen options.

And also from my perspective, like, I don't know what Muños had been doing for the previous seven weeks.

Like, I know, I know every single Jeff Hoffman outing up to that point.

I know every single Luis Varland outing.

Like, I understand where these guys' arms are at, where their velo's at, what they've looked like recently.

How is he viewed, and is that success kind of a cloak for failure this year? Or are fans kind of hammering and saying last year was a fluke like they are with Dan Wilson here?

And, and also, when did you realize that they were also buyers as well?

Yeah, it's, I'm sure Ross Atkins would have a better answer on that timeline than me.

I can only go off what I was kind of hearing ahead of the deadline.

But as far as I'm aware, they gave the team, like, kind of every shot to be buyers in July.

So even as they were six, seven, eight games below 500, they were still not telling other teams that they were gonna be sellers.

They were, they were pretty quiet in terms of communicating to other teams up until even, like, the week before the deadline.

And then it became, I think, fairly obvious to everyone outside the org that they were gonna be sellers, and they started kind of exploring those options.

Yeah

Uh, the fact that the Jays are willing to give these young guys opportunities at the top of the lineup to try to find something that works right now.

Yeah, I think it's the fact that they're up here isn't, like, necessarily shocking.

The fact that they're hitting one, two is maybe what's surprising.

Like Bateman, when he was in there on, I believe it was Saturday against Jesús Luzardo, I was like, "Oh my God," like, "This, this is wild." You go and look at his Triple-A numbers.

He has like a 620 OPS against lefties [chuckles] in Triple-A.

He had, I think, four or five RBIs against lefties in his entire Triple-A season.

Uh, and he's out there, like, I believe he was lead and offer, hitting second against one of the best lefties in baseball.

Um, just how much of an audition, again, acknowledging that making the playoffs is still the foremost thing, um, the opportunity here for Bateman to make a claim that, hey, he's not an up and down guy next year, he's not a fourth, fifth outfielder, he's a guy who can be in the plans next year.

You mentioned George had an incredible season last year, and I, I guess now that we're about two and a half, three months into this season, you do kind of have to start to ask yourself, "Was that just an out-of-body experience or is there something going on this year that's preventing him from reaching last year?" Kind of what are, what are you seeing from George Springer right now, and, um, was last year just what I said? Was it just kind of a, a, a one-time he found the fountain of youth and this is what you're gonna be accustomed to moving forward?

Y- in a way, George Springer is, like, the encapsulation of the 2026 Toronto Blue Jays in that everything went right kind of out of nowhere in 2025.

And he put up-- He got MVP votes, like real MVP votes.

He was on lots of ballots.

He was arguably one of the best right-handed hitters in all of baseball.

They go to the World Series.

He hits that big homer in the ALCS, and then everyone's like, "Okay," in the off-season.

Is that hard for them to keep that intact from one season to the other?

Did that change, you know, how maybe you're working through this or how they're working through this at all?

Yeah, I think the caveat to all this is this time of year when a tough decision has to be made, oftentimes someone's got a sore shoulder or a sore forearm, and, you know, the, maybe it isn't the, the tough decision that we thought it was gonna be.

I wouldn't be shocked if that comes down.

I think just in discussing Spencer Miles, w- we've talked about his workload all year.

If he keeps pitching, even if it's not in this bulk starter role, a multi-inning relief role, I would be shocked if there's not an IL stint for him at some point in the season, because, like, he's, even if he's not truly hurt, there's gotta be some fatigue in there at some point, and that would help, uh, ease a decision like this.

But let's say that's not happening today, and that there isn't an IL stint we're not expecting.

It is, it is an interesting call.

Um, what do you, kind of, are we about to enter, not the most important part of their season necessarily, but the most informative part of their season, given that the, oh, half the team's on the IL, is going to at least be partially in the review, and they're kind of running out of time for the, oh, just stay afloat part of this?

So if they lose Max, then, then who's next, right? How much depth do the Blue Jays have in order to just keep them afloat?

They've kind of already called on that depth.

Like, the guys we see now were the sixth through eighth starters we thought we would see in, like, June and July.

So they've made...

They've pulled Patrick Corbin off the street or [laughs] off his, uh, his house in Florida to come pitch a s- pitch a game for them.

He's gonna be in the rotation for the foreseeable future.

They've made waiver claims.

... on most of the Jays guys?

So tell us what we know about how the Blue Jays pulled that off and whether you think it will be repeatable.

Yeah.

I think most of the credit inside the organization goes to the hitting group, their, their hitting coach group, when they had David Popkins come in as a first-year hitting coach.

They brought in Lou Ivanati, uh, as his assistant, and Hunter Mentz, who had been with the Jays for a couple years and is now the, the head hitting coach with the Giants, kind of took on a slightly different role and became kind of, like, the game planning mastermind for the Jays.

Like, you talk to any player, and any hitter especially, and they were just glowing about those guys and kind of how they worked in conjunction, and the ability to go to, to Popkins and, like, get swing adjustments and the trust they had in, in Mentz's game plan and the one-on-one work with Ivanati.

I think George Springer, undoubtedly, those guys helped a lot.

He, he made changes all throughout spring training last year that turned him from, like, a potential castoff to an MVP vote getter.

I want to hear about the bat and how the Blue Jays see that playing in the transition to MLB, but I really want to ask about the long-term defensive fit for him.

The big question is, how healthy is Bo? And then what implications are there for the other guys in the roster if Bo's good enough to play and, and be in this lineup in some capacity?

Yeah, I think he's certainly not 100%.

Like I (laughs) don't think there's, there's any way that this is a full strength Bo Bichette.

Like if he was fully healthy, he would be playing shortstop.

There'd be none of this him taking ground balls at second base, no discussion of how they're gonna navigate essentially having two DHs on the roster in, in him and George Springer.

But from what I've heard, his bat is, like, pretty good to go.

Like he's been seeing live pitching for a couple weeks now.

So what are your expectations for him in a huge spot in game one?

Is it all these things? What, what, what sort of was the big key for you?

Yeah.

I think it's, it's kind of a combination of all those things.

But the offense is, I think, the place to look at how this team like really got going.

Like, they had maybe the worst non-Rockies bullpen in baseball last year.

I- it's not like an elite bullpen this year, but they patched that over, but that's like kind of something a team that wants to win can do in an off season.

Like, you can figure out a bullpen.

Mm-hmm.