The MLB playoffs are headed back to Canada

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In 2020, the Toronto Blue Jays made the playoffs, but they didn't really. The COVID-shortened 60-game season provoked MLB to expand the post-season to include more than half of the league, and the Blue Jays earned the final spot before being swept by Tampa Bay in two straight without so much as a home game.

Last year, the Blue Jays finished the season looking like legit title contenders — earning the proverbial status of "team no one wants to face in the playoffs" — but fell one game short of actually getting there.

In 2022, the Blue Jays have now exceeded last season's win total by that one critical game, with two more to spare. Toronto's 91st victory on Monday, coupled with a Mariners loss, meant it is locked in as the AL's fourth seed. The Blue Jays hadn't enjoyed back-back 90-win seasons since 1991-1993. I hear that was a pretty good run.

And so for the first time since 2016, the playoffs are coming back to Toronto. Game 1 is on Friday against Seattle.

Here's everything else you need to know:

Homefield advantage is more important than ever. In MLB's new post-season format, six teams per league (up from five last year, but down from eight in 2020) advance. That's three division winners, plus the three teams with the next-best records. The top two division winners earn first-round byes, while the third hosts the final wild-card team for the entirety of a three-game series while the top wild card welcomes the second. The Blue Jays are that top wild-card team, meaning the series against the Mariners will be solely played at Rogers Centre. While the Blue Jays sported similar home and road records, you don't have to look far back to see just how flipping frenzied the Toronto crowd can get — for better or worse. One more thing to note: since the vaccination requirement to enter Canada has been lifted, opposing teams no longer have to worry about unvaccinated players of their own. That means Seattle starter Robbie Ray, who won the Cy Young Award with Toronto last season but missed the Mariners' lone trip across the border this year, would be available to pitch.

A terror awaits if the Blue Jays move on. Another feature of the new format is that teams aren't reseeded after each round — they simply play through a bracket like March Madness. The winner of the Blue Jays' wild-card series will head to Houston to meet the 104-win Astros, who have reached the AL Championship Series in five straight years and played in the World Series in three of them, winning in 2017. That victory is tainted by the sign-stealing scandal, and key players such as current Blue Jays centre fielder George Springer, who won World Series MVP in 2017, have since moved on, but Houston just keeps chugging along. The winner of the AL's other first-round series, hosted by Cleveland, heads to Yankee Stadium.

The Jays' best three starters are lined up for the first round. Toronto's current four-game winning streak helped avoid a potential dilemma in Game 162, which ace Alek Manoah was slated to start. If homefield was still up for grabs, the question of whether to burn the burly righty for the whole first round in pursuit of batting last would have produced plenty of contentious sports-talk-radio fodder. Instead Manoah, who pitched to a sterling 0.88 earned-runs average over six September starts, is a near-lock to start Game 1. Steady off-season acquisition Kevin Gausman could start Game 2 while Ross Stripling, a swingman who admirably plugged the rotation for the injured Hyun-jin Ryu, would be in line for a decisive Game 3. Toronto could also flip-flop Gausman and Stripling in hopes of sweeping the first round and having Gausman available for Game 1 against the Astros. The rotation maneuvering is especially important for a Blue Jays team whose fourth starter, Jose Berrios, pitched to an ugly 5.32 ERA and whose fifth starter, deadline pickup Mitch White, never found his footing in Toronto.

Toronto's balanced lineup is all heating up at the same time. Despite 91 wins and a relatively comfortable playoff berth, the Blue Jays season — especially given early World Series expectations — often felt incomplete as the supposed sleeping juggernaut never quite woke up. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. regressed from MVP candidate to all-star, Bo Bichette looked lost for months and Springer battled injury for the second straight year. But everything seems to be clicking now. Guerrero Jr. has homers in two of his past four games to up his season total to a team-leading 32. Bichette rediscovered his aggressive self in late August and took off, improving his batting average of .256 on Aug. 20 to .289 today. With one more dinger, Bichette would become the fifth Blue Jay to reach 25 on the season. Springer, meanwhile, has played 33 of the team's past 34 games, matching his monthly season-high with six homers across September and October. Even much-maligned trade-deadline addition Whit Merrifield turned his season around, batting .474 with four homers and 11 RBI across his last 11 games. And that's without mentioning surging outfielder Teoscar Hernandez and the standout catching tandem of Danny Jansen and Alejandro Kirk, among others.

But first: two more games in Baltimore. The results are meaningless, the weather forecast is bleak and any rainout would likely not be made up. But as long as the skies allow, the games, scheduled as a doubleheader Wednesday, must still be played. Either way, you're unlikely to see much of the Jays' key regulars, making the end to the season a bit anticlimactic. The real climax, Toronto hopes, will come in about a month's time, when if all goes well Canadian Jordan Romano could close out the World Series for his hometown team.