The Toronto Blue Jays have sent a jolt of electricity through the Canadian sports landscape, with George Springer’s epic three-run home run instantly joining the pantheon of heritage minutes provided by Blue Jays before him: Roberto Alomar’s line-drive home run in the setting sun against Dennis Eckersley and the Oakland A’s in the ALCS in 1992, Joe Carter touching them all after his walk-off home run to win the World Series in 1993 and the Bat Flip, Jose Bautista’s earth-shot in Game 5 of the ALDS in 2015.
If the Jays go on to fell Shohei Ohtani and the Los Angeles Dodgers, Springer’s dinger might stand on top of them all, unless something similarly do-or-die happens during the Fall Classic.
Several of the Raptors were at Rogers Centre to take in Game 7. Hopefully they appreciated what they saw: a team that that was significantly better than the sum of its parts exceeding any external expectations to achieve its collective potential, igniting a city and country along the way.
Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic was certainly hoping they would absorb the vibes of 44,470 losing their collective minds straight into their veins.
“The Blue Jays are having an amazing season, a great playoff run over here,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic, who didn’t follow baseball growing up in Serbia, but has been swept up in the Jays’ success, like everyone else. “… It’s really, exciting. And it’s awesome for us to be in the city and to see that energy, knowing that that type of energy is going to be same for us once we start rolling in the playoffs.”
Sports fans love an underdog story, as they should. The idea of a group of previously unheralded types getting a chance and running with it, achieving peaks no one could have predicted, resonates a little more than characters an iteration or two removed from the Marvel Universe simply doing superhuman things.
It’s far easier to find common ground in the mind’s eye with Jays journeyman Nathan Lukes – who put in a decade in the minors before becoming a full-time major-leaguer earlier this season at age 30, and is now a fixture at the top of the order on a World Series team – than baseball Supermen like Ohtani, or Yankees behemoth Aaron Judge.
Even the Blue Jays versions of The Monsters are relatable: Vladmir Guerrero Jr. as the young prodigy whose roller-coaster ride as the Blue Jays saviour-in-residence brought him to tears as he reflected on the journey from being signed as a 16 year-old to earning ALCS honours, or Springer, the post-season lion fighting through injury to roar one more time at age 36.
In basketball terms, is what the Blue Jays – projected to be a .500 team before finishing with the second-best regular season record in baseball and the AL championship – did replicable?
The Raptors finished 11th in the Eastern Conference a season ago and haven’t made the playoffs since losing in the first-round to Philadelphia in 2021, Scottie Barnes’ rookie season.
But then again, the Blue Jays finished 11th out of 15 AL teams in 2025 and didn’t exactly set the world on fire adding name talent in the off-season, unless you count signing then-40-year-old Max Scherzer for one last gasp – which worked out pretty well!!
Still the ranks of NBA champions – or even contenders – are rarely if ever populated by every-man types. Teams that win or compete for titles in the NBA typically rollout at least one future Hall-of-Famer, if not two, and multiple all-stars.
A quick scan – or even a careful perusing – of the Raptors’ projected lineup as they get ready to tip off the 2025-26 season in Atlanta on Wednesday night (Sportsnet ONE, Sportsnet+, 7:30 p.m. ET / 4:30 p.m. PT) would find it lacking by that standard.
The Raptors would do well to have even one all-star – Barnes? Brandon Ingram? – representing them come February.
Even in the depleted Eastern Conference, it’s hard to see this version of the Raptors competing with the Cleveland Cavaliers or New York Knicks, the consensus favourites to represent the East in the NBA Finals, and that’s without having to contemplate dealing with whoever survives the gauntlet that is the loaded Western Conference.
But what if we dial things back a little bit, and look at the possibility of the Raptors being interesting? Competitive? Inspiring? Better than expected?
What if the standard is: play hard, play together and take care of the little details, which the Blue Jays seem to have tattooed on the brains somehow.
That’s a standard that this group can reach. It’s something that they are even trying to speak into existence.
“I think the good thing is everybody is eager to learn every single day. As long as we come in with the mindset and attitude, we’ll continue to get better,” said Ingram. “You see how hard we work on the defensive end. If we just tidy up some things on the defensive end and work on our execution on the offensive end, staying poised, I think we’ll continue to get better.”
There is plenty of room for improvement.
Oddsmakers have the Raptors pegged to win in the neighbourhood of 39 or 40 games, which would be a bump from 30 last season and 25 the year before that, but hardly the kind of result that gets a city or country engaged. It would likely barely qualify the Raptors for the Play-in Tournament, the NBA’s version of hoping to find love at last call.
But some of the most enjoyable seasons in Raptors history have centred on teams that have win totals in the high 40s, which is not quite at the 50-win threshold for ‘good teams’ but where things can get interesting.
When the Raptors won their first ever playoff series over the New York Knicks in 2001, setting them up for their epic seven-game series against the Philadelphia 76ers, they were coming off a 47-win season. Their out-of-nowhere run to the playoffs in 2006-07, the first year of the Bryan Colangelo era, was sparked by a 47-win campaign. And the most exciting stretch of Raptors basketball ever – which ended with the 2019 championship and the last time all of Canada rallied behind a Toronto team – started with a surprising 48-34 season in 2013-14, kicking off seven seasons of unprecedented success.
Is that a level this version of the Raptors can achieve? Fun and overachieving, hinting at the possibility of more?
But it will require the Raptors taking on some of the Blue Jays; qualities.
They’ll need homegrown hero (in waiting) Barnes — the closest facsimile the Raptors have to Guerrero — deliver the kind of all-round dominance he’s shown in flashes but hasn’t yet for a full year.
They’ll need Ingram — the only other all-star-pedigreed player on the roster — to shake off the doubts his long history with season-interrupting injuries have inspired and show that he remains one of the pre-eminent talents in the sport.
Can point guard Immanuel Quickley demonstrate why he was deemed a worthy centrepiece in the trade of OG Anunoby, who has established himself as a foundation piece with the Knicks?
Can hometown hero RJ Barrett learn to thrive in a lesser role in a more talented Raptors lineup, and deliver selfless and efficient production filling in the cracks and gaps?
Among the team’s collection of under-the-radar bench options, can one, two or three of them prove to be significant NBA rotations pieces, giving the Raptors the kind of production from the bottom half of their lineup that has proved the difference so often this season for the Blue Jays? Sandro Mamukelashvili? Ochai Agbaji? Jamal Shead? Gradey Dick?
The need is there and if the Raptors are going to surprise anyone this season, it will have to be met.
And can rookie Collin Murray-Boyles give the Raptors the kind of unexpected oomph in his first season of professional basketball that rookie right-hander Trey Yesavage has given the Blue Jays in September and October?
The analogies aren’t perfect, but the through line is there: The Blue Jays have shocked baseball this season by having a selfless group play above expectations while their small stable of horses have delivered in the biggest moments.
If the Raptors are going to be the next team to capture the city or even the country’s imagination while defying external expectations, they’re going to have to go about it much the same way.
As the Blue Jays have shown, it can be done, and when it happens, it’s a glorious thing for all involved.
