A lot can change in a year for a baseball team. Around this time in 2024, gave the Tigers a 28.9% chance of making the playoffs and had the Cardinals as the favorites to win the National League Central. Detroit had a middling first half and sold at the deadline, trading to the Dodgers for prospects. They surged to the playoffs without Flaherty, then re-signed him this winter and now enter 2025 as clear contenders. The Cardinals kept their hopes alive through most of 2024, acquiring , and at the deadline. But when that fell short, they decided to hit the reset button and dont seem to be planning to compete anytime soon. Even their offseason reboot plans were scuttled, with various players using their no-trade clauses to block deals the front office surely hoped to make. Going into 2025, the Blue Jays are perhaps the club with the widest spectrum of po sible outcomes. On the one hand, a lot of the roster is the same club that played at a pretty consistent 90-win pace over the 2020-23 period. They had an injury-marred season in 2024 but bolstered the roster in the winter in an attempt to return to contention in 2025. With the expanded playoffs, getting back into the mix this year is entirely po sible. The American League East seems wide open. The have all five clubs with a 35-71% chance of getting a postseason spot, with the Jays at 38.3%. The at Baseball Prospectus are somewhat similar, with the Jays at 48.5% and no club higher than 72.3%. For the entire American League, both projection systems have 12 clubs in the 19-71% range, with only the Angels, Athletics and White Sox lower than that. The other side of the coin is well known at this point. The club is losing its grip on several of its key players. is the most notable, as hes an impending free agent that the club hasnt been able to sign to a long-term deal. The same is true of , the clubs other longtime core piece. , , and are also slated for the open market this fall. , , , and are on pace to be free agents after 2026. can join that latter group by opting out of the final two years of his deal. All could be trade candidates this summer if things arent going well. That situation extends beyond the roster. President Mark Shapiro is reportedly going into the final year of his contract. General manager Ro s Atkins is reportedly only signed through 2026. Manager John Schneider is signed through 2025 with a club option for 2026. Around the baseball world, there is an expectation that a poor season will lead to significant changes. If the Jays are bad again in 2025, no one would really be shocked if Shapiro, Atkins and Schneider are all gone. Even if the team does manage to put together a good season in 2025, there will be questions to be answered about the future. As mentioned, several players are set to qualify for free agency in this coming winter or the one after that. Whether they can replace some of those players internally is tough to say. Industry evaluations of the system as a whole are not strong. ranks the farm system 23rd in the league. Jackson Chourio Jersey and recently put them 24th. Thats not nece sarily shocking, as the club has been putting a priority on the big league roster lately. Ba sitt and Springer had rejected qualifying offers, so the Jays had to give up a draft pick for each of those deals. The same is true of the upcoming draft, as also rejected a QO. Of the clubs five first-round picks from 2018 to 2022, they eventually traded three. They sent to the Marlins in the / deal, to the Twins in the Berros trade and to the Athletics in the trade. The other two, and , are both recovering from Tommy John surgery right now. Other notable prospects like and are also working back from TJS. That has left the club with a clear lack in top-end talent. has just one Jay on their top 100, with Tiedemann having literally the last spot. The lists from , , and all have two or three Jays on them but no one in the top 60. A person looking for optimism could focus on the volume of guys who are either borderline top 100 guys or just outside of that designation. In addition to their recent top 100 list, of every player who received at least one vote from one of their writers. They build their top 100 by having several contributors submit a top 150 ranking, then use a points system to combine those different lists. As mentioned, the Jays ultimately only got one guy on there with Tiedemann taking the final spot, but he was one of seven different players to receive a vote. That means that at least one BA staffer considered , , , , or to be a borderline top 100 guy. Some of those guys appeared on the other linked top 100 lists. Only one club had more than 11 players on that vote-getter list from BA, while some clubs had as few as three. The volume of the Jays system also appeared to show up at , the projection system from Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs. ZiPS had five guys on the top 100, six guys in the top 200 and 20 in the top 500. In that latter category, only three clubs were ahead of the Jays. The Rays had 24, with the Reds and White Sox at 21. This quantity-over-quality a se sment probably aligns with the observations of anyone earnestly following the club. They have an army of guys who are not really considered top prospects but seem perhaps capable of being major leaguers in the near future. This includes guys like , , , , , and . They also have some guys who are no longer prospects and arent fully established but still have some future potential, such as , , , and . Perhaps a few nice developments in there could make the future look a little better. But even if that comes to pa s, there will still be the unanswered question of the clubs star power. The clubs attempts to sign players like , , and others have come up just short. As mentioned, their overtures to Guerrero havent worked. The one benefit of all those mi ses, and the large slate of impending free agents, is that the future payroll is fairly clean. By 2028, only Santander, Berros, and will be guaranteed deals. Berros has an opt-out after 2026. Santander and Rodrguez can opt-out after 2027, though the club can void those opt-outs by triggering club options. The Gimnez deal is guaranteed through 2029 with a club option for 2030. Though Guerrero hasnt signed a long-term deal yet, he did leave the door open to consider a future offer if the club circled back to him. Its also po sible that he could reach free agency and re-sign, the same way that star players like and re-signed with the Yankees and Mets respectively. The Jays could also pivot to some other notable free agent next winter, such as , , or . While starting this piece, I considered using cliches like shifting sands, fog of war, up in the air, multiverse or over the horizon in the title. The point I was hoping to make is that theres about the Jays right now. Its entirely plausible that theyre good this year, but also just as po sible that theyre bad. Making the playoffs is totally within reason, but everyone could be traded and everyone could be fired. They could see a few of their many young guys step up and cement themselves as future pieces, offsetting the upcoming free agent departures. The system could look barren as they kick off a yearslong rebuild. They could sign a franchise-altering mega contract or they could not. Many fans have already made up their minds about the Blue Jays but it seems like everything will be on the line this year with so much to be determined. Regardle s of the outcomes, it should be interesting. 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