The Blue Jays just showed the Mariners what kind of team they should be

Even if envy is a deadly sin, there are times when it's not only unavoidable, but appropriate. Take the Seattle Mariners, and specifically how they must feel about the Toronto Blue Jays a day after they won an instant classic in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series.

Exactly what led the Mariners to make it 0-for-49 in their all-time efforts to reach the World Series is a long story. The starting pitching coughing up a 6.59 ERA in the series is one part. Dan Wilson's befuddling bullpen management is certainly another.

However, you wouldn't necessarily wish the Mariners could have traded places with the Blue Jays in those two departments. At least on paper, Toronto was overmatched in both the rotation and the bullpen in the ALCS. And for his part, John Schneider did not escape this series without facing questions about his own bullpen management.

What really swung the ALCS was literally how the two teams swung the bat. Even if the Blue Jays only outscored the Mariners by one run per game throughout the series, they hit .271 to the Mariners' .222 and struck out 31 fewer times. In effect, an offensive masterclass took place opposite an offensive catastrophe.

The Blue Jays showed the Mariners an example to follow in the ALCS

There are lessons for the Mariners to learn here, starting with how much it helps to have a bottom of the order that is actually functional. As compiled by Foolish Baseball, these numbers on the 7-8-9 hitters for each side in this series are mind-boggling:

After Eugenio Suárez in the No. 6 spot, the Mariners' lineup was basically an automatic out in three parts. Though hardly the meat of their lineup, the bottom of the Blue Jays' order was good enough to at least warrant careful pitching.

It's hard for a team to wave its hands and manifest depth like this, but the personnel comparison does not reflect well on Jerry Dipoto and the Mariners' brass. There's no reason they can't go get competent major leaguers like Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Andrés Giménez, whereas what they actually did was rely heavily on Quad-A types like Leo Rivas and Dominic Canzone.

At the same time, though, the Blue Jays kinda-sorta did wave their hands and manifest a deep offense. Theirs carried out a philosophical revolution in real time throughout the regular season, with Mike Petriello of MLB.com writing about how it all led to a dramatic and team-wide increase in bat speed.

Between this and Toronto's aggressiveness in the strike zone, it shouldn't be a surprise that they did a better job of balancing power and contact (11 HR, 40 K) than the Mariners did (14 HR, 71 K) in the ALCS. It was a case of a high-floor, high-ceiling offense beating a low-floor, high-ceiling offense.

To give credit where it's due, the Mariners did live up to hitting coach Kevin Seitzer's desire to showcase more versatility on offense this year. They ranked third in MLB in both home runs and stolen bases. They were also top-10 in walks and even had the biggest year-over-year decrease in strikeout rate. The end result was their highest-scoring season since 2016.

However, even the Mariners' greatly reduced strikeout rate was still the seventh-highest in the league. A higher rate at T-Mobile Park (24.6, 2nd in MLB) played a role in that, but you could also call it a swing thing. After Suárez and Josh Naylor came aboard at the trade deadline, the Mariners' swings got faster (72.2 mph vs. 72.5 mph) but also longer (7.3 feet vs. 7.5 feet). It was a shift toward Giancarlo Stantonization, and the postseason revealed the risks underneath the rewards.

If the downside of deliberately chasing more contact in 2026 is that there will be fewer home runs, well, so be it. Especially if they keep up the aggressiveness on the basepaths, it could mean trading more boom potential for a lot less bust potential.

If the Mariners simply run it back with another shallow offense built around swinging for the fences in 2026, they'll run the risk of proving the classic definition of insanity. You can't do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.