Looks like the Blue Jays have overcome their fear of making big promises. Now they have to deliver

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Toronto Blue Jays interim manager John Schneider has a way of winding himself into every answer. He starts with a quick thought. “A lot” often features. Then he expands briefly. If he’s still feeling good about where he’s headed, he expands expansively.

Hours removed from the Blue Jays’ first home playoff date in a while, Schneider was asked what his team is “capable of.”

“A lot,” he said.

Then he listed off the roster’s general attributes.

Then he said this: “Myself, the staff and every player in the clubhouse has every confidence in us being the last team standing.”

Okay, so it’s not Joe Namath. But it is a senior member of the most pedantically cautious organization in galactic sport saying they’re going to win it all.

Remember the last time the Jays made the playoffs, back in 2020? Similar situation – three-game wild-card series, albeit on the road in Tampa Bay. How was their preseries confidence back then?

“They might be the best team in baseball,” then-Jays manager Charlie Montoyo said. He was not talking about the Jays. “So they’re looking forward to the challenge.”

Not exactly once more into the breach, is it?

“We’re just going to go battle with them and we’ll see what happens,” outfielder Lourdes Gurriel said.

‘We’ll see what happens’ is baseball-player talk for ‘please don’t bet your own money’.

You didn’t know before they played that series, but you sort of knew. The Jays were happy to be there and, having got there, were also happy to go home. It had been that sort of season.

We’re not yet at the must-win Jays, in the way that the Yankees, Astros and Dodgers are must-win sort of teams. But baby steps.

Just talking about the likelihood of a World Series (without actually saying the words) feels like a watershed for the Toronto baseball organization.

Even the order of speakers on Thursday nodded to this change.

First up, general manager Ross Atkins.

Atkins was there to shore up the narrative thus far. The story is ‘Mission Accomplished’.

In order to stave off general fanbase unrest, the Jays had to make the postseason. Now that that’s handled, Atkins delivered the sort of summation you tend to hear on a locker clear-out day.

“Playing for a country, in this remarkable city, with so much energy – it is such an incredible experience,” Atkins said. “It has been a very, very good ride for us.”

This is how you know things are pointing up – when the guys in charge are basking. Fair enough. The Jays are still in that sweet spot where their supporters are willing to forgive their mistakes as long as they are mistakes of enthusiasm. The Jays weren’t quite the team everyone projected this year, but there’s still time.

Atkins was there to remind people that things are good.

Schneider followed with the situation on the ground and next steps. The prediction seemed to be unscripted. Whatever the case, that’s the one time he gets to do something like that. If things go wrong, people will be happy to remind him where public optimism gets you.

Last up, the best reason to believe the Jays will get the better of the Seattle Mariners – Game 1 starter Alek Manoah.

The Jays have done a good-to-very-good job of developing talent over the past five years. The best indicator of that – some of their most important players (Alejandro Kirk, Santiago Espinal, Ross Stripling, etc.) arrived with no advance billing.

But this management group’s greatest accomplishment is drafting Manoah. It’s not the pitching, which is remarkable. It’s everything else.

Every great team needs a charismatic focal point. Until Manoah showed up, Toronto didn’t have one. It had some fun guys and some great young players, but nobody capable of drawing the attention of people who don’t care about baseball.

Manoah is that guy. He may soon be the most vivid presence on any team in baseball.

Atkins and, to a lesser extent, Schneider, were keen to emphasize “depth” as the key to the Jays’ success (another way of emphasizing what a great job they’ve done). But Manoah is the key to this series.

He isn’t just capable of winning the first game. He has the stuff to rob Seattle of its will to go on.

“This is what it’s all about – the bright lights,” Manoah said, giving the last three syllables a bit of rhetorical oomph. He is the sort of player born to be underneath them.

Over the space of 50 or so minutes, we saw all three of the Jays’ ghosts – Christmases past, present and future.

(After that, Alejandro Kirk, a 23-year-old who was born to be some teenager’s vaguely disapproving father, grimaced through 10 minutes of Q and A before he was allowed to escape.)

Now we know – seven years. That’s how long it says it takes in the Bible, and that’s how long it’s taken for the Jays. Seven lean years until you arrive at something that feels like a fully formed, contending major-league baseball team.

Will the city jump on from the start? Probably not. It doesn’t help that the first game starts in the afternoon of a work day.

But if the Jays can get through the Mariners, the front-runners of this “remarkable” city will be all over the team.

Is the World Series a reasonable goal? Shouldn’t it always be? If you believe you’ve constructed a team of substance, there’s no point in thinking otherwise.

And now that they’ve got past their chronic fear of promising anything, what’s left is figuring out the delivering part.