Opportunity awaits for Blue Jays to turn Yankees series into a Canada Day party

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Last place, first place, winning streak or losing one, when the Blue Jays celebrate the red and white Maple Leaf for the annual Canada Day game, it’s one of the great days on this country’s sporting calendar.

The 2025 renewal of the official start to summer, a July 1 baseball party on Tuesday, has the potential to be so much more, however, for a Blue Jays team threatening to make diehard believers of their fan base once again.

A four-game series against the American League East New York Yankees couldn’t come at a more festive time for a Jays team that spent most of June re-establishing themselves as a division contender.

The hot streaks have tended to outweigh the tepid ones and after what felt like a significant 5-3 win over the Red Sox on Sunday, finished off a 4-2 road trip through Cleveland and Boston that improved their record to 45-38.

Manager John Schneider’s team is still very much a work in progress, one battling through injuries and inconsistencies through much of the season to date, but vastly improved from a year ago with potential upside still remaining.

Starting Monday, however, a chance to gain further ground on the Yankees the most direct way, has to be enticing for Schneider and a tight-knit group that has shown its resiliency over the first half of the season.

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The opener of the Yankees series, which like the Canada Day extravaganza the following day, is expected to be a sellout. And those at the Rogers Centre will see a terrific pitching matchup between the Jays Max Scherzer and Yankees lefty Carlos Rodon.

Scherzer has made a career of thriving in the big moments and it’s like Monday’s stage will be made for him in his second start back from an elongated residency on the injured list. A first-inning matchup of Scherzer vs. Yankees star Aaron Judge sure sounds like an alluring way to get things rolling.

Next up for the Jays is Kevin Gausman who faces another New York ace in Max Fried. High stakes, superstars and a national holiday: What’s not to celebrate.

On the long and winding road to 162 games, hyperbole is best avoided any time before September when predicting the importance of any given MLB series.

That disclaimer aside, the showdown with the Yankees truly feels like the biggest series the Jays have had since sometime late in the 2023 season.

For the Yankees, there’s a chance to expand the three-game lead they maintained after a 12-5 win over the Athletics on Sunday.

For the Jays, there’s opportunity to both tighten the race and in their first homestand of the second half, show they have serious designs on not just a wild-card spot, but of chasing down the division.

Looking further ahead, with the trade deadline suddenly looming at the end of July, the more headway the Jays make, the more incentive heightens for general manager Ross Atkins to do some damage at would could be one of the most critical junctures of his career.

There’s plenty of baseball left, yes, including another home series against the Yankees later this month. But with a captive audience celebrating the nation’s birthday, what effectively is the start of summer and a team finishing of a June showing they are worth getting behind in a big way, it could be a rocking time at the dome.

Complicating matters is the fact that the Jays are six days in to a 16 games in 16 days stretch that at some point will lead to weariness. Of course, finishing off a series win on Sunday at Fenway — their eighth series in their past 10 — would have injected a burst of energy for what awaits.

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Now that the standings show they are in contention for the division, it’s also time for the Jays to start bumping up their record against co-inhabitants of the AL East. Even in taking the last two against the Sox on the weekend, the Jays have lost five of their last seven to division opponents and are 12-13 overall. That said, winning their latest series allowed them to move five games ahead of the Red Sox, who are teetering on the wrong side of playoff discussions.

For a team looking to elevate beyond the wild-card discussion — and third place in the East given they trail both the Yankees and Rays — that will have to change. Monday and the three days to follow would be as good a time to start as any.