Blue Jays Make Exciting Announcement Before Phillies Game
Blue Jays Make Exciting Announcement Before Phillies Game originally appeared on Athlon Sports.
The Toronto Blue Jays showcased arguably their best offensive performance in a series this season as they completed a four-game sweep of the Athletics, which concluded with a thrilling 8-4 victory on Sunday. This sweep extended the Blue Jays' winning streak to five games and improved their season record to 31-28, positioning them second in the AL East, one game above the Tampa Bay Rays.
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In the series finale, Addison Barger broke the deadlock with a decisive three-run homer in the eighth inning, igniting a six-run rally that sealed the win. Throughout the series, Toronto's offense was formidable, with George Springer contributing two home runs and Bo Bichette adding a solo shot in earlier games.
Toronto Blue Jays shortstop Bo Bichette (11).© John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images
The Blue Jays will shift their attention to a tougher test against the Philadelphia Phillies, and have now received a boost with the return of second baseman Andrés Gimenez and catcher Tyler Heineman from the injured list. To accommodate their reinstatement, infielders Michael Stefanic and Ali Sánchez were designated for assignment.
Gimenez, 26, had been sidelined since May 9 due to a right quadriceps strain sustained while attempting to beat out a throw to first base. The Blue Jays announced the exciting news of his return on X.
Prior to his injury, Gimenez had been a key contributor, both offensively and defensively, for Toronto. Acquired in an offseason trade with the Cleveland Guardians, Gimenez made an immediate impact by hitting three home runs in his first five games—a franchise record for a newcomer. Although his batting average stood at .195 over 36 games, his defense and base-running abilities added significant value to the team.
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The Blue Jays prepare to host the Phillies on Tuesday night at Rogers Centre, they aim to carry forward their winning momentum. The pitching matchup features Bowden Francis (2-6, 5.04 ERA) for Toronto against Christopher Sanchez (4-1, 3.32 ERA) for Philadelphia.
Related: Blue Jays Facing Backlash After Announcement Before Phillies Game
Related: Blue Jays Announce Move After Max Scherzer News
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 3, 2025, where it first appeared.
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Blue Jays Reporter Opens Up About Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Shohei Ohtani in New Book
Blue Jays Reporter Opens Up About Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Shohei Ohtani in New Book originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The Toronto Blue Jays aren't the MLB's most successful franchise, but there have been plenty of highlights in their 49-year history. The 1992 and '93 World Series wins, Joe Carter and José Bautista's bat flips, and the current era with superstar Vladimir Guerrero Jr. have all entrenched the organization in the baseball pantheon. Advertisement However, the team has also partially been defined by failure, such as when it missed the playoffs in Guerrero's near-MVP season in 2021 and striking out in the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes two years later. Toronto fans have experienced their fair share of pain, but Blue Jays beat reporter Keegan Matheson wrote a book that will take the old ones down memory lane and give the young ones perspective. The book, titled "The Franchise: Toronto Blue Jays," and releasing on Tuesday, covers everything from the franchise's inception to the current decade. It's branded as "A Curated History of the Jays," reading less like a history textbook and more like a mixture of the most iconic and never-before-told stories from different periods. Matheson, who has covered the team since 2017, spoke to Athlon Sports about the book, his thoughts on the 2025 Blue Jays, and more. Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr (27)Brad Penner-Imagn Images Josh Valdez: Why should Blue Jays fans be excited about your book, and what makes it different? Advertisement Keegan Matheson: I think this book, and I only really came to understand this as I wrote it, but it's a book about why people give a damn about this team. Whether it's growing up with a team or coming back from that for a lot of years, it's a book about the people and the moments that make this team matter to people. You know, whether you love them on any given night or you're angry that they lost 1-0, people deep down still love this team, and this team still matters to people in a really intimate and meaningful way. And it's even the same for me. Even though this job has made them mean something different to me, the Blue Jays have been a huge part of my life. So I hope that it connects with people in that regard and really gets the moments they care about. But the other thing I tried to do with this book was to not bore people. I think the keyword in the title is "Curated." It's the curated history of the Blue Jays. If this were just a history book, it would be 20 books long, and it would read like a school textbook, and it would be boring, because there are 50 years of history, and you can get into a million different things over 50 years of a Major League Baseball team. But I was able to be picky and be selective with the stories I wanted to tell. 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Advertisement Josh Valdez: What was the criterion for what made them good stories for you to include? Keegan Matheson: In one regard, I wanted some of these stories to be fresh. Now, there's always going to have to be a chapter for Joe Carter's home run. There will always have to be a chapter about Bautista's bat flip and those great teams of the mid-80s. And I've written those a hundred times, and I wrote it for a 101st time in this book, I hope more interesting than before, but those stories always matter. They're always going to matter. But I wanted to include some new stories as well, because, again, I really do see this book as just adding to the stories that have been told about the Blue Jays. This is not the first book written about this team, and it won't be the last. But I hope to add some things that haven't been written about before. That can be in terms of players' lives around this city, the experience of playing in Toronto, and playing in Canada. Some of these chapters focus on the COVID years. When I was on the road with the team, some of what they went through and some of my experience being on the road and what I had to do to cover the team in the U.S. and Dunedin and Buffalo, the chapters on Shohei Ohtani and that pursuit that I was there for and had some stories I've been saving about. So some of these stories are old stories from a new angle, but some of them, I hope, are brand new stories for people, and I wanted to balance that out, because there is such a rich history with this team, but it's still being created, too. There's still new stuff to add, and I think that's what makes a team like the Blue Jays exciting. They're no longer the new kids, we're coming up on half a century here. 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"The X" is...a lot of people remember it as a bit of a dump, and a lot of the players would agree with that, but there is this sense of pride where it's just like kind of their beat up first apartment, like that apartment you have in college that you still kind of love because it was yours. But moving from there to the Skydome to being that team in Canada, along with the [Montreal] Expos back then. And the idea of going from the new kid on the block to a team that actually belonged, I think, really interests me. Part of that was infrastructure. It was moving from a pretty terrible stadium. You know, [former Blue Jays president] Paul Beeston always says it wasn't just the worst stadium of baseball, it was the worst stadium in all of sports, and he was probably right. But moving into Skydome, which was like playing in space at the time. I don't appreciate it as much now as I should, but at the time, it was just an unbelievable marvel. 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Because when we talk about Vladdy being a great Blue Jay, well, who's he up against? Who does he need to be better than? I think stuff like that makes everybody a baseball fan, and it's something that I nerd out about anyway. I'm really interested in the history of the team, where they've come from. I'm happy to be covering the Blue Jays from the fancy Rogers Centre press box and not the Exhibition Stadium press box. It's probably a bit better spread in the one I cover them in. It's been fun to learn about that. Josh Valdez: You mentioned Vlad just now. Do you cover him and this era a decent amount in the book? Or is it more focused on past years? Keegan Matheson: Yeah, it's pretty evenly balanced in terms of time. Now, I start at Exhibition Stadium and how Skydome was built, which I really love writing, but I also include two chapters on Vladdy. The first chapter on Vladdy is about his prospect years, and it's just about his prospect years, because I think that's a big example of something that I had on my mind throughout this whole book. And it's the reason that I included the Shohei Ohtani chapter as well, because, yeah, it's over. He plays for the [Los Angeles] Dodgers, sorry. But I think that was an interesting enough story that I wanted to kind of cut it out and have it exist all by itself just to document it. So like that exists, and I can look back on it. Advertisement Vladdy's prospect years were the same. I don't think I'll ever see anything like Vladdy as a prospect. I really, I don't know if I covered this game 40 more years, I might not see another prospect like Vladdy. And it's one of the only times I can remember where the hitter was controlling what was happening in it at bat. It was unbelievable. So to talk to people, and even talking to John Schneider, who was his manager back then, he just sits and shakes his head. He's like, "Man, I'll never see anything like that. It only comes around every 20, 30 years." So I wanted there to be a Vladdy chapter that was just about that, so that I can kind of frame that in history, and it's always there. The next Vladdy chapter was about his 2021 season, in which he nearly won the MVP, and when that team almost made the playoffs I think that's a great tragedy of the era, that that team did not make the playoffs with Marcus Semiem and Teoscar Hernandez in that lineup. But that frames kind of the best of Vladdy at this point. And that was really fun to write and document. Charlie Montoyo, his teammates speaking about what a superstar looks like. Like one of the best seasons we've ever seen in Toronto. Now, going into present day, the book was obviously written well ahead of Vlady's extension, maybe that's a chapter we can add if we go to paperback eventually. But my big fear was that he would get traded or something and blow the whole book up. I keep thinking of Tim McMahon, the NBA reporter, whom I really respect. He wrote the Luka [Doncic] book, and boom, Luka gets traded. I lost sleep over something major happening like that, thankfully not. But yeah, two Vlad chapters that were really fun to write, and hopefully it gives me reason to write a third or a fourth or another book someday. Josh Valdez: Has the book changed your perspective on this season or just the present day? Do you feel like you're not as stressed anymore about stuff that could change or outdate the book now that Vlad's contract is locked in? Advertisement Keegan Matheson: Yeah, I do, and that was a big anxiety point for me because things can change very quickly. You know, one swing, one game, one parade changes everything. And I'm really happy with where it's landed, And because this window is still kind of open, I struggled with that a couple of times, like, should I write the story on this era of Blue Jays baseball, under Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins? We're still in it right now. And while it has not been good yet, they have not won a postseason game since 2016. I started covering the team in 2017. So, all I have covered are teams that don't show up in the postseason. But all they have to do is do that once. And whether I think that's going to happen or not, probably doesn't even matter at this point. The moment you break through, when the Blue Jays get hot and go on a run this year, next year, the year after, the last 10 years immediately don't matter anymore. Because when you have a moment like that, like '92 and '93, even like '15 and '16, those [latter two] teams didn't even go to the World Series, and I think they're forever going to be held up by a lot of people as a couple of the great Jays teams that really mean something to people, because they got them back into baseball, or they reminded them of how much they loved the team. All you've got to do is have a moment like that, and it can change everything. So I'm I'm happy with where it landed honestly, I don't even mean this as a marketing play. I genuinely mean that it changed this whole job for me, because it changed how I approached stories every day, it changed how I understand this team. It made me much happier doing this job. And it made me realize that, yeah, probably tomorrow or the next day, I might have to write a story about how somebody's curveball didn't work and it got hit a few times. That's fine, but that's factory work. By the next day, that story's not going to matter, but it made much more interested in the bigger stories around this team and the stories that have a little likes to them. And it reaffirmed for me, I guess, that those stories do matter, because when you have a moment like Joe Carter, that lasts forever. When you have a career like Dave Steve did, that lasts forever. Like Roy Halladay, like José Bautista with that one home run. I'll be 70 years old talking about the bat flip. It reminded me that those can come around anytime, even though it's been a rough decade for the Blue Jays, if just one of those moments come around, you forget about everything else. Advertisement Josh Valdez: And what do the Jays have to do, in your opinion, to finally get back to the mountaintop? Keegan Matheson: They need to develop some sort of identity. I keep going back to that 2021 team, which was one of the best lineups we will ever see in Toronto, period. They had Semien having an all-time season. Vladdy was playing MVP-caliber baseball. There's not always going to be Shohei Otani to win it in front of him. He was playing like an MVP, and you had a lineup that was threatening from top to bottom, because it had power. And the Blue Jays have gotten away from that. Right now, they're a team that is stuck in a lot of 2-1, 3-2 games. And when you're playing that type of baseball, you need to be perfect. because one mistake can send it sideways. When you're playing a game like they played in 2021, and I'd argue even like '15 or '16, you can make five mistakes. You can completely screw up, but if someone hits a three-run home run, guess what I'm writing about, the three run home run and a win. So I think they need to get back to more of an identity, and identity is usually based on offense, which hasn't been there lately. So you can not only get out to lead, but chase teams down if they get a lead on you, and I don't see that lately. 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