What Would It Take For The Blue Jays To Make The Postseason in 2008?

First off, it's not going to happen. The Jays, while certainly better since Cito Gaston took over the team's management from John Gibbons, have been frustratingly inconsistent of late. Losing 2 of 3 against the Tampa Bay Rays recently, where their bats went silent and so they came up short by 1-0 and 3-2 scores behind very solid Toronto pitching, and then similarly managing only one run in a 2-1 loss to the Yankees on Friday night, has unfortunately offset some other, impressive results (including yesterday's come-from-behind 7-6 victory and today's 6-2 Roy Halladay special, both against those same Yankees). Sitting 9 games back in the wildcard race after today's play, they're just not going to be playing baseball after September 28th.

But what would it take, at least in theory? The Jays have 26 games left, and 3 teams to overtake (Boston, Minnesota/Chicago White Sox - whichever of them doesn't win the AL Central - and the Yankees). To do that, the following would have to happen:

• the Jays would need to go at least 20-6 over that stretch (in other words, comparable to what Colorado did last year in their final month of the season) and thus finish with 90 wins or more
• in their 3 remaining games with the Twins, 4 against the White Sox, 3 with the Yankees and 7 (!) head-to-head with the Red Sox, they'd need to be merciless and win the vast majority, since that has the bonus value of guaranteed advancement against rivals in the race
• none of the 3 teams ahead of them, with the possible exception of the Yankees who only lead the Jays by 2 games right now, could possibly go better than 0.500 in their remaining games, since there just isn't enough time left in the schedule to make up a bunch of ground if the teams you're trying to catch are posting good results
  

So, it's not impossible, but that's a tall order, some of which is even outside of the Jays' control. I'd be thrilled if they posted a solid 17-9 record, which would give them a seasonal record of 87-75... not shabby at all!