For 22 consecutive seasons, there was nary a meaningful game in September to be had for the Toronto Blue Jays. The last month of the schedule was usually a death march to the finish line, as the season would come to a merciful end.

But thanks to the Blue Jays being a consistent contender since 2020, those September games have had a little extra juice five out of the last six years. We won’t talk about 2024 because that season — like the 2015 World Series — never happened.

With the Blue Jays fighting for their playoff lives down the stretch this year, it’s the perfect time to look back at how the Blue Jays have fared in recent September stretches.

The 2021 Blue Jays squad (along with the 1987 and 2006 teams) will go down as one of the best in franchise history to barely miss out on the postseason. Although Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was entrenched in his breakout 48-home run season, and Robbie Ray was en route to winning a Cy Young Award, the team struggled for the first two-thirds of the season.

And then the Blue Jays caught fire in late August, and never really stopped. On August 26, 2021, the Blue Jays were left for dead, with 4.6% playoff odds and 5.5 games out of a playoff spot. In their final 36 games, the Blue Jays went 25-11, narrowly missing out on a playoff spot.

The Blue Jays started September of 2021 with an eight-game win streak, highlighted by an epic 11-10 walk-off win against the Oakland A’s at home on September 3. Toronto squashed a six-run deficit with two innings left to play, and walked it off via a Marcus Semien solo home run.

When the dust settled on the 2021 campaign, the 2021 Blue Jays went 19-9 in the month of September, but were one game short of a playoff spot. They had the collective American League playoff teams thanking their stars the Blue Jays didn’t get in, because they were a juggernaut down the stretch.

For the most part, it was a drama-free regular season for the 2022 Blue Jays, but they more than made up for it in the playoffs. The division was well out of reach early in the year due to the Yankees surging out to a 56-21 record through the end of June, but Toronto was tied for the third-best record in the AL that year.

Prior to their spectacular crash and burn in their postseason series against the Seattle Mariners, the 2022 Blue Jays were firing on all cylinders during the final month of the season. Their 18-10 record catapulted the Blue Jays to the top of the Wild Card standings, as they finished with a 92-70 record, 22 games above .500.

And it was all for naught, as the Blue Jays were swept in two games by the Mariners.

Whereas most of 2022 was smooth sailing for the Blue Jays, the following year was a grind just to get to the postseason. Toronto eked in as the final Wild Card team, and even got their preferential matchup of the Minnesota Twins, the weakest of the division winners that year.

The Blue Jays’ playoff odds dipped to a season-low 33.3% on September 14 after a four-game losing streak, but they rallied and won nine of their next 15 games to muscle their way in as the final Wild Card representative in the American League.

Perhaps the most memorable part of this September 2023 run was the return of Hyun-Jin Ryu, who finished up his Blue Jays contract and came back from Tommy John surgery to provide a much-needed shot of adrenaline to the starting rotation.

Although he was an August 1 addition to the roster as essentially a trade deadline pickup, Ryu finished the year by pitching crucial games for the Blue Jays in September.

The Blue Jays’ playoff chances were never in doubt last September; the question was whether they could stave off the New York Yankees for the division title. It worked out for the Blue Jays thanks largely to having the tiebreaker over the Yankees, but a 15-10 record last September was barely enough for Toronto to hang on for their seventh AL East title in franchise history.

Finishing with a 15-10 record is nothing to sneeze at, but with the hard-charging Yankees going 16-12 in August and 18-7 in September, the Blue Jays had little room for error. The Jays had a mini-slump of sorts, dropping four consecutive games (the final two games of a series in Tampa Bay, and the first two games of a series in Kansas City).

The Blue Jays also lost two of their first three home games during their final homestand of the season before winning out the rest of their schedule against the Red Sox and sweeping an ever-important home series against the Tampa Bay Rays.