Plenty of room on Blue Jays bandwagon as team leads AL East heading into final stretch of season

The Blue Jays are leading their divisional rivals as the baseball season enters its final regular-season stretch, giving the team a chance to claim a leading playoff spot for the first time in a decade.

But there's still a lot of baseball to play, and the team will have to fight their way through 34 more games before the playoffs begin.

Currently, the Blue Jays sit in first place in the American League East, with the Yankees and Red Sox trailing Toronto.

If Toronto can stay ahead of those rivals, the club could be looking at its first division title since 2015, meaning they would make the playoffs without having to qualify for a wildcard spot.

For playoff-hungry Toronto baseball fans, the time to jump on the bandwagon has come.

Lesley Mak, a noted Blue Jays superfan, says this is a team that's already exceeded expectations ahead of any potential playoff run.

"A few of my friends refer to this as the 'Team of Destiny,' " she said. 

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Ahead of Friday's games, Toronto's win-loss record stood at 74-54.

That puts them slightly ahead of the pace of the José Bautista-led Jays squad of 2015, which was at 72-56 through the same number of games. The Jays won games at a torrid pace as that season closed and went on to won the division title, though they eventually lost the American League Championship Series to the Kansas City Royals, who became World Series champs.

Likewise, the Blue Jays were at 70-58 through 128 games in the 2022 season; and at 67-61 the year before. Both of those teams won at least 20 games more than they lost.

Don't talk like that. But try not to think about the 1987 season, when the soaring Jays squad lost the last seven