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Bichette says current Toronto Blue Jays fans remind him of 2015, 2016 teams

Adam Laskaris
Adam Laskaris
|
Jul 22 2025, 3:38 pm
Bichette says current Toronto Blue Jays fans remind him of 2015, 2016 teams
John E. Sokolowski/Imagn Images

If you’re having a conversation about the Toronto Blue Jays these days, it’s likely a pretty positive one.

And star shortstop Bo Bichette seems to feel the same way.

Hot off an 11-game home win streak ā€” and an American League leading 29-13 record since June 1 ā€” the Blue Jays have their players reminiscing about the best teams in recent franchise history.

ā€œThis [fanbase] is what I remember watching on TV when I was 17 years old at home, with [Jose] Bautista and [Josh] Donaldson,ā€ Bichette said to MLB.com’s Keegan Matheson.

In a two-year stretch in 2015 and 2016, the Blue Jays made consecutive appearances in the American League Championship Series, falling short to Kansas City and Cleveland.

But while they didn’t accomplish the ultimate goal of winning a World Series, those two playoff runs helped put Toronto back on the baseball map, including for players like Bichette, who was drafted by the Jays in 2016.

Donaldson won the American League MVP in his first season in Toronto in 2015, whereas Jose Bautista put his name forever in the upper echelon of “cool baseball dudes” with an iconic bat flip after a go-ahead home run in Game 5 of the American League Division Series that same year in a win over the Texas Rangers.

The Blue Jays have made three playoff appearances since 2017, but it’s hard to look back on them too fondly the same way most fans look back on 2015 and 2016. Only one of three series saw Toronto host a game (2022), and all three occasions (2020, 2022, and 2023) saw the Blue Jays swept in two games in the American League Wild Card round.

The Jays have two more games at home against the rival New York Yankees before heading out on a two-series road trip in Detroit and Baltimore. While their final results this season are still up in the air, it’s hard to find much to poke too many holes in a team that’s firing on all cylinders right now.

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