Not many predicted the Toronto Blue Jays to be atop the AL East, let alone hold that lead for a prolonged period.

Heading into the final month of the regular season, the Blue Jays have put a small break from the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees in their division lead race, although there is still some time for both teams to catch up over the next month. Another factor that’s helping Toronto this time around is its winning record against AL playoff contenders.

Believe it or not, the Blue Jays hold tiebreakers over five teams that are in the thick of a playoff race – here’s why this matters even more now:

As the Blue Jays prepare for the last month of the season and the Boston Red Sox continue to fire on all cylinders, the two teams meet one last time at the end of September for the final face-off. The good news for the Blue Jays is that they hold the tiebreaker in this matchup. Even if Boston were to sweep the last three-game series between the two sides, they wouldn’t be able to get the chance to flip the tiebreaker since the theoretical record would still stand at 7-6 after that sweep.

In the case where the Blue Jays and Red Sox tie for a win-loss record at the end of the regular season, the advantage will go to Toronto, no matter what, because they’ve already earned the upper hand. That’s a good place to be if you’re the Blue Jays – that’s the level of comfort that they’ve never had before.

Once upon a time, the Detroit Tigers were titanic compared to the limping Blue Jays, and that was the beginning of the 2025 season. Since then, the script has flipped: the Blue Jays are sitting neck and neck with the Tigers for the best record in the AL (the Tigers have one win and one more game on the Jays).

The Blue Jays have also found a steady footing after losing to the Tigers at the start of the season and have secured a series win in Detroit. This helped Toronto earn the tiebreaker advantage with a 4-3 record. The Blue Jays and Tigers aren’t scheduled to meet again this regular season, and this tiebreaker will pay off if the two teams need a tiebreaker for when it comes to seeding in the postseason. If both teams tie, Toronto would slot ahead and could avoid potentially having to play in a Wild Card matchup, as the top two teams in the AL get a bye into the Division Series, while the third-ranked team has to face the lowest-seeded Wild Card spot.

Given Toronto’s history in the Wild Card, they likely want to avoid that as much as possible.

The New York Yankees only took away one series against the Blue Jays this season.

For the other two series, the Blue Jays swept the Yankees in early July before taking the second one later that month. The two teams are set to meet in the Bronx for the last three-game series, and the Blue Jays won’t have to worry about losing the tiebreaker to the Yankees any longer, holding the tiebreaker with a 7-3 record. In other words, Toronto will still own the tiebreaker advantage, even if New York finds a way to sweep the last series.

The AL East division may not be as comfortable for the Blue Jays any longer, but to be in a place where they don’t have to worry about the nuance of tiebreakers and their implications in the playoff picture is a weight lifted off their shoulders. In that sense, the pressure really is on the Yankees to prove themselves one last time.

So long as Toronto continues to win more games and can hold the division lead, playing against New York shouldn’t be overwhelmingly stressful if the Jays can take care of business.

Since 2022, the Seattle Mariners have become the Blue Jays’ archnemesis outside of the division. After all, this is a team that swept Toronto at Rogers Centre in the AL Wild Card series – that bad blood doesn’t go away easily. In the past, Toronto always struggled to come out on top of Seattle.

However, the Blue Jays swept the Mariners at T-Mobile Park this year to take revenge. That record made up for an early-season series loss against Seattle, and now the Blue Jays hold the tiebreaker with a 4-2 against the resurgent AL West team. The two teams won’t meet again for the rest of the regular season, but with Seattle’s struggles in the summer months, the Blue Jays have a chance to hold a better regular-season record, on top of their tiebreaker against the Mariners. You can only hope that’s the best possible way to start the playoff revenge script and keep themselves ahead of a Wild Card tiebreak.

This tiebreaker won’t matter as much as the Texas Rangers have played themselves out of the playoff race for the past couple of months. That said, Texas is somehow only 4.5 games out of the last AL Wild Card spot, which means that there is a world where they are in the playoffs. However, for the Rangers to come back into the playoff picture, they would have to go on a white-hot winning streak with more consistent offensive performances over the course of the next few weeks.

Should the Rangers make it to the playoff stage, the Blue Jays won’t have to worry too much about losing any advantage against the Rangers, because they have already won the tiebreaker with a 4-2 record. The two teams aren’t scheduled to play against each other for the rest of the regular season. The Blue Jays won’t have to sweat about facing the Rangers’ pristine pitching for a while in the playoffs or even think about that scenario if they don’t find ways to get hot.