You could call it an argument, a discussion - whatever. We have the same conversation with friends and colleagues every year come spring training.
They say that the Blue Jays are ready to break out, and pursue the minimum 90 wins that are usually required to challenge for a wild card berth.
Now the Jays did, after all, get to 85 wins last season, 86 two seasons ago, and even 87 in 2006.
But where, exactly, are those 90 wins are going to come from? That's when the real debate begins.
So TSN.ca presents it to you - that even though the Jays have been relatively close, the team still has some difficult ground to make up to achieve the magic 90-win plateau.
And that plateau is significant. The winner of the AL wild card over the last five seasons has required a minimum average of 89.6 wins to make the post-season. It should be noted, though, that each of those wild-card winning clubs actually averaged 94.8 wins at season's end. In other words, they beat the minimum requirement by about five victories and most were in a tight playoff chase for their own division title.
Using records from the past five seasons, we'll start in the infamous American League East, where people usually point first to show how difficult life for the Jays can be.
But you might be surprised to find that it's not the East that kills the Blue Jays most years.
The Jays are not overmatched by the 72 games of tough competition that the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, and Orioles present each year. Toronto went 39-33 against the East last season, paced in large part by a 15-3 performance against Baltimore. Toronto, more often than not, breaks relatively even against New York and Boston, although they have had trouble head-to-head with the Rays in the last three years.
Yet even before Tampa Bay became a perennial playoff contender, Toronto could not take advantage of a weaker Rays squad and rarely won more than 10 of the 18 games per year against them.
Overall though, the Blue Jays are bang on average - 181-181 - against their own division over the past five years.
http://www.tsn.ca/mlb/story/?id=356987
