The Blue Jays need home-field advantage this postseason

Funny enough, Toronto’s 2025 season paints a completely different picture when it comes to the home and road splits.

This year, the Blue Jays have a 50-25 home record and a 40-41 away record, demonstrating that the team has effectively utilized its home-field advantage and larger crowds at the Rogers Centre. Their 50-25 home record is third in MLB, following the Milwaukee Brewers and Philadelphia Phillies, which also coincides with MLB’s overall best win-loss record rankings. This further showcases how teams that have performed extremely well at home this season are in a good position to clinch the home-field advantage, if they haven’t yet.

The Jays rank 11th in home attendance this year, averaging 34,647 fans per home outing. This average will likely climb with the Jays finishing the year at home, and will hopefully aid in their attempt to clinch the AL East crown.

Why the Blue Jays love playing at home

If the four-game home series against the New York Yankees this summer was any indication, the Rogers Centre is a very hostile environment for many opponents to endure.

A fully-packed home crowd is an inexplicable factor that has played in the Blue Jays’ favour for over 70 games this year. While some abstract factors can’t be quantified, The Athletic’s Blue Jays beat reporter Mitch Bannon recently dove into how the Blue Jays excelled at Rogers Centre this season.

According to Bannon, Rogers Centre offers more than just good batter’s eye; it offers great facilities (think weight room, training room and more) and the Trajekt pitching machine that helps hitters to understand how they can approach each opposing pitcher. Most of all, Chris Bassitt elaborated that the pitchers have access to “accrued knowledge of the Rogers Centre’s effect on different pitches.” This in-depth knowledge understandably remains confidential, but what Blue Jays’ pitchers understand now is how their pitches would play out with the effects of the wind in an open dome situation. Statcast gives the Jays a 106 park factor, ranking fourth in the big leagues behind the Rockies, Athletics, and Rays.

Many quantifiable and unquantifiable things have shaped the Blue Jays’ home-field advantage, and now putting those factors in play during the playoffs will be crucial if the team intends to make a deep playoff run.

Why home-field advantage matters

Playing at home usually gives a team a greater probability of winning. Case in point, the Jays with home-field advantage boast an above .600 home record. Punching the ticket to the playoffs has always been the goal from the start, but securing the bye is the ultimate goal as a team that’s at the top of the American League.

Although their division and league lead remain slim with the New York Yankees chasing to close that gap, the Blue Jays still hold the tiebreaker against their longstanding rival. That tiebreaker will come to save them should they end with the identical win-loss record as the Yankees down the road. Every regular-season game and series matters, and that’s why holding the tiebreaker advantage will loom even larger in a heart-attack-inducing race.

Even with a tiebreaker and other advantages they may hold against their rivals, the Blue Jays must clinch the AL East and maintain the best AL record to lock up their home-field advantage in the ALDS and ALCS if they want a better shot at advancing to the World Series.

Toronto is already the first in the American League, and defending that position for the rest of this month will determine their fate in October. The Blue Jays have to come out victorious against the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays, which isn’t the easiest task. However, that may be a different story because they get to face these division rivals at home.

Home-field advantage matters. Playing at Rogers Centre isn’t just a chance at the Blue Jays’ redemption; it’s a chance to flourish and put their recent postseason demons in the rearview mirror.