It’s about that time to begin reflecting on the Toronto Blue Jays’ 2026 season.

Barring a last-minute miracle, this franchise will watch its grim post-season chances fall to zero upon being officially eliminated from playoff contention in the coming days, signalling the end of a year ripe with disappointment following last fall’s World Series run. It wasn’t supposed to play out this way.

Almost 12 months ago, the Blue Jays sat just two outs away from popping champagne bottles to celebrate their first championship title in three-plus decades. Now, they’re on the precipice of playing October-less baseball for the second time in the last three seasons — after opening this season with aspirations of running it back to the Fall Classic.

In the days, weeks and months ahead, your timeline will surely begin to fill with theories outlining where things went wrong — if they haven’t already. Injuries, of course, should be near the top of the discussion list. Inconsistency and negative regression from the offence’s core bats, namely Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer, also need to be up there.

But as mind-numbingly frustrating as the ’26 campaign has been, there have also been a handful of promising storylines around this club, too. Heck, this second-half, post-trade-deadline surge wouldn’t have been possible without them. So they also deserve their time in the spotlight.

With that in mind, these are the players — in no particular order — who’ve meant the most to the Blue Jays this season. Without each of their efforts, climbing back into the race for the American League’s third and final wild-card spot never would’ve been possible.

There’s no better place to start than here.

Blue Jays fans have witnessed an incredible Cy Young-calibre performance from Cease in the first season of his seven-year, $210 million contract. Even if we don’t see him take the mound again until 2027, as the 30-year-old hurler will likely remain shut down through this final week due to shoulder fatigue/inflammation, the right-hander’s transformation into one of baseball’s most lethal front-line starters won’t be forgotten.

For most of the second half, Cease had been matching New York Yankees young phenom Cam Schlittler blow for blow in the AL Cy Young race until Toronto’s ace ran out of gas. Results-wise, though, it’s still been a career year across the board with his 2.55 FIP (lowest among qualified AL starters), 34.9 per cent strikeout rate, .179 OPP AVG, 0.59 HR/9 and 5.5 fWAR — highest of any Blue Jays player (hitter or pitcher) this season.

This organization’s pitching department, led by Pete Walker, Sam Greene and Graham Johnson, has helped unlock Cease’s full potential on the mound. They’ve taken him from a one-dimensional, two-pitch pitcher and moulded him into a complete pitcher with five dependable weapons, all capable of helping him induce quick outs and last deeper into games.

The Blue Jays didn’t just raise the ceiling of their starting rotation this season. They developed an ace to lead that staff through the rest of this decade.

Only three pitchers have thrown more innings for the Blue Jays than Miles in ’26 (one of them now plays for the Chicago Cubs): Cease (169), Kevin Gausman (127.1) and Trey Yesavage (95.2).

Before Monday’s series opener in Baltimore, that number was two, as Miles’ 94.2 innings sat slightly ahead of Yesavage’s total ahead of his return from the IL. Between eight opener starts and 40 relief appearances, last year’s Rule 5 selection will likely finish just shy of eclipsing 100 innings as a rookie — a significant jump from the 8.2 innings he threw in the Arizona Fall League last year after missing all of 2025 due to injury.

Having the 26-year-old log this many innings — with only 14.2 professional innings under his belt from 2022-24 — probably wasn’t the organization’s original plan back in the spring. But plans can change, and there wasn’t exactly a template to follow in this case. Instead, they’ve created one themselves, which other teams will surely now attempt to replicate with future Rule 5 selections.

Miles has been the perfect surprise for Toronto’s staff. You rarely expect a lottery ticket like this to hit the way he has, accounting for 2.0 fWAR thus far — along with his 2.57 ERA, 2.65 FIP and 17.6 per cent strikeout-minus-walk rate. Whether he returns as a reliever or is stretched out as a starter next season, he’ll remain one of the club’s most vital weapons in any role.

When the Blue Jays acquired Varland from the Minnesota Twins prior to last season’s trade deadline, it felt like they had landed a future closer in the making. Well, the future, in that regard, arrived earlier this season.

Varland’s evolution has reached its peak in ’26, as the former starter — any potential discussions about stretching him out again are long gone, and rightly so — has transformed from a rising high-leverage reliever to one of the sport’s most elite closers. He and San Diego’s Mason Miller lead their respective leagues in fWAR at 3.0 and 3.7, respectively, with the pair tabbed as the current favourites for this year’s AL and NL Reliever of the Year awards.

Handing the keys to the closer’s role from Jeff Hoffman — now the Twins’ primary set-up reliever — to Varland was a complex decision that manager John Schneider did not take lightly. But it was a necessary move, one that has immensely solidified the back end of the bullpen for the foreseeable future.

Jumping over to the position-player side, no player has added more value to the Blue Jays’ offence this season than Okamoto, who leads the team in most categories, including home runs (33), RBI (89), SLG (.458), ISO (.222) and fWAR (2.9). You couldn’t have drawn up a more impressive start to his MLB career.

Coming over from Japan, Okamoto — whose 33 home runs lead all major-league rookies and, sitting one ahead of fellow Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami, currently represents the most in a single season by a rookie born in their country — has needed to adjust on the fly, exposed to new pitchers and hitting environments at the sport’s highest level. But he’s handled everything in stride, even displaying optimism for additional growth next year.

In the second half, especially, the 30-year-old has done an excellent job of cutting down the swing-and-miss (21.1 per cent strikeout rate since Aug. 16) and shrinking the gaps between his power surges, slashing .265/.344/.575 with nine home runs and a 154 wRC+ (100 league average) over his last 31 games entering Tuesday’s affair. The everyday third baseman has been one of the lone shining lights for a 29th-ranked offence.

Losing Alejandro Kirk for two months this summer should’ve been disastrous for the Blue Jays. That’s one of the many key players they couldn’t afford to lose to an extended absence, and ultimately did. And yet, thanks to Brandon Valenzuela’s emergence, the club managed to survive it.

From late April to mid-June, Valenzuela arose as Toronto’s starting catcher in place of Kirk, offering considerable upside — both as a defender and a hitter (162 wRC+ in 118 plate appearances during that span). The rookie backstop’s offensive results have since regressed as his playing time has become less frequent now that Kirk’s returned. His defence hasn’t, however, with his plus-11 fielding run value positioned in the sport’s 94th percentile.

In a perfect world, Kirk doesn’t fracture his left thumb on a foul ball during the first road game of ’26. Without it, though, perhaps this season wouldn’t have presented the franchise with its catching duo for the next several years.

Sometimes, the best stories can happen when you least expect them. For Bateman, one half of the return in last month’s Kevin Gausman trade with the Cubs, that fits his character arc like a glove. His arrival was perfectly timed and added a much-needed jolt during the Blue Jays’ 24-13 surge — the best record in baseball from July 27 to Sep. 5.

Since the rookie’s major league debut on Aug. 7, Bateman ranks first among the team’s position players in fWAR (1.7), sitting a few decimal points ahead of Kirk (1.6) and Okamoto (1.1) in this span. But in accordance with this season’s never-ending string of injuries, he became the injury bug’s latest victim during a sliding catch that knocked him out with a right hip ailment Monday night, hammering the final nail in the coffin for this franchise’s post-season hopes.

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