The Toronto Blue Jays open the 2026 season exactly one month from Friday as anticipation builds coming off their most successful season in more than 30 years.
ESPN’s Buster Olney joined 1050 Toronto’s First Up Friday morning and said those around baseball believe the Jays will get all they can handle as they try to repeat as American League East champions.
What’s the consensus on potentially baseball’s best division heading into 2026?
“That the Yankees and Blue Jays are going to go head-to-head this year. I mean, they’re going to be banging away at each other all season long,” Olney said. “[Yankees manager] Aaron Boone, I had him on the podcast the other day and he was talking about how they have so many areas of growth on this team. This is not your dad’s Yankees team where they have a bunch of veterans all over the place.”
Olney pointed to a couple players who made big contributions to the Yankees last season as rookies.
“Ben Rice, their first baseman, looks like he’s going to become a star this year. You guys remember Cam Schlittler and how he announced his presence with authority in the postseason against the Red Sox? He now is someone they’ll have around for a full season,” he said.
The Yankees didn’t do much this winter in the way of additions with their biggest off-season move being the re-signing of outfielder Cody Bellinger. But as Olney points out, New York was active in adding to the roster at last summer’s trade deadline and could benefit from having those players in uniform for a full season.
“They made roster additions during the course of [last] year. I mean, they and the Jays finished with 94 wins last year. I think it’s going to be a great race between those teams,” he said.
As for the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles, the other two teams expected to contend in the AL East in 2026, Olney sees flaws.
“The Red Sox have really leaned into pitching and defence this winter. I have some questions about their power. If either Willson Contreras or Roman Anthony get hurt, where are they going to get their power from? And yeah, the Orioles finally spent some money this winter signing Pete Alonso. But it always feels like they’re about two pitching injuries short of having a complete disaster on their hands,” he said.
Olney pointed to the Jays’ depth as an asset and was impressed they were able to add to it this week by bringing back future Hall-of-Famer Max Scherzer on a one-year deal. At the moment, Scherzer is Toronto’s eighth starting pitcher, joining the staff of Dylan Cease, Kevin Gausman, Trey Yesavage, Shane Bieber, Jose Berrios, Cody Ponce and Eric Lauer.
Olney thinks the rotation will have a way of working itself out and mentioned a six-man rotation as a possible solution.
“There are injuries that will manifest at some point and that will probably settle it, who’s in the rotation and who’s not. If they do happen to stay healthy, they demonstrated I think that Eric Lauer is someone that they’re comfortable moving to the bullpen. Cody Ponce because of his stature and his history, not as established as Max Scherzer. He probably would be another candidate for the bullpen in my eyes,” he said.
“You know this, if you bring in Max Scherzer you’re going to start him and you’re probably going to try and give him as much rest as possible between starts. It might be that we see the Blue Jays have a lot of stretches through the season where they’re basically using a six-man rotation and then dropping in different guys.”
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