One tricky thing about sports is figuring out how much a disappointing season should change your thinking. A year ago, the Toronto Blue Jays were one of baseball’s most productive offensive teams. This season, they struggled to score runs and hit home runs, and they ended up watching the postseason from home. That’s quite a change in a short time.

The easy answer is to say the Blue Jays need more offence. The numbers certainly support that argument. But I wonder whether the bigger question is how Toronto gets back to being the kind of team it was in 2025.

More Talent Isn’t Always the Whole Answer

The Blue Jays had some difficult injury problems in 2026. Alejandro Kirk missed time, while Addison Barger and Anthony Santander didn’t play at all. Losing that much help makes it harder to build a consistent lineup. Their returns should help, assuming they come back healthy and productive. But I’d be careful about treating those returns as a complete solution.

Toronto scored the fewest runs in the league and hit the fewest home runs. Those numbers are hard to overcome, even when the pitching and defence are doing their jobs. General manager Ross Atkins has some work to do. Adding a quality bat could help, and the free-agent market may offer opportunities. But signing another player doesn’t automatically restore an offence’s confidence, timing, or ability to deliver when runners are on base.

Sometimes, a team needs more talent. Sometimes, it needs a better balance of the talent it already has. Often, it needs both.

The Blue Jays’ Challenge Is Knowing What to Keep

I wouldn’t take one disappointing season as a reason to abandon everything that worked before. The Blue Jays have evidence that their core can produce a very good offence. Now the job is to understand why that production disappeared and determine which changes would make the biggest difference.

That’s not always easy. Injuries can disrupt a lineup, young players can take time to develop, and established hitters can have difficult seasons. A front office has to separate problems likely to correct themselves from those that require action. Toronto shouldn’t assume that getting healthy will fix everything. But it shouldn’t assume that the entire approach is broken, either.

The Blue Jays Have Work to Do This Offseason

The best offseasons aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest shopping lists. They’re the ones in which a team understands what went wrong and makes the right changes for the right reasons. The Blue Jays have work ahead of them. They need more reliable offence, and Atkins has to decide where that help should come from.

But this doesn’t have to be about starting over. It can be about rediscovering the team’s identity, adding what is missing, and giving a good group of players a better chance to show what they can do. That’s a more useful place to start than assuming every disappointing season requires a complete rebuild.

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