The 2023 Major League Baseball postseason commences on Tuesday. For the second straight season, the Toronto Blue Jays are playoff bound. Last year, Toronto made the American League Wildcard Series, but lost two games to none in a best of three series to the Seattle Mariners. Ironically this season, the Blue Jays reached the postseason by a single game over Seattle. Toronto got the sixth and final playoff spot in the American League with a record of 89 wins and 73 losses. Seattle’s record was 88 wins and 74 losses.
Toronto clinched a playoff spot when Seattle lost 6-1 to the Texas Rangers on Saturday. The Blue Jays will now face the Minnesota Twins in the American League Wildcard Series starting Tuesday. This will be the second time ever that the Blue Jays will have faced the Twins in the playoffs. Minnesota won four games to one in the 1991 American League Championship Series.
The two best Blue Jays this year were starting pitchers Kevin Gausman and Chris Bassitt. Gausman led the American League with 237 strikeouts and was second in the American League with 21 quality starts. Bassitt led the American League with 16 wins and was third in the American League with 20 quality starts. The other three wildcard series have the Tampa Bay Rays against the Texas Rangers, the Miami Marlins against the Philadelphia Phillies and the Arizona Diamondbacks against the Milwaukee Brewers.
