10 Reasons The Toronto Blue Jays Are Guaranteed To Win The World Series

    Team. Of. Destiny.

    Paul McLeod
    by Paul McLeod

    BuzzFeed Political Editor, Canada

    1. The magical parrot that helps designated hitter Edwin Encarnacion hit home runs.

    Via giphy.com

    The "official" history of Encarnacion's distinctive home run trot is an obvious cover story. All fans know he is giving rides to the invisible magic bird from which he draws his power.

    2. Munenori Kawasaki.

    Via giphy.com

    Absolutely everyone loves this guy. Fans love him, teammates love him. Even opposing players root for him and against themselves. Other than the fact that he can't really hit and had to be sent down to the minor leagues, he's the perfect baseball player.

    3. The Blue Jays have the only starting pitcher in baseball who throws a knuckleball. And the knuckleball is wizardry.

    Via businessinsider.com

    Look at that thing. It goes left-right-left-right-down. How are you supposed to hit that? The knuckleball is the equivalent to finding a glitch in the Matrix. It's cheating physics. If Dickey was around 200 years ago we'd be burning him at the stake for witchcraft.

    How does it work? The short answer: black magic. The medium answer: by throwing the ball with hardly any spin you create a drag force behind the ball that causes it to jolt and shimmy in unpredictable ways. The long answer is here.

    4. They literally committed highway robbery to trade for Josh Donaldson.

    BuzzFeed Canada

    Here's what must have happened. One day during the off-season Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (yes, the one played by Brad Pitt in Moneyball) was walking down a dusty country road when he suddenly found himself surrounded by intimidating Blue Jays executives.

    The execs forced Beane at knife-point to trade them third baseman Josh Donaldson for a less good, often injured third baseman and a couple B-list prospects.

    Donaldson now leads the league in runs batted in and could end up the American League's Most Valuable Player. Oakland is last in the American League.

    Now wanted by authorities for the steal of the century, Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos manages the team through dispatches from his various Central American hiding spots.

    5. Josh Donaldson's heckling.

    Via tumblr.com

    Sometime's he's goofy! Sometimes he's, well, less goofy.

    6. The Jays' offence is so crazy good their stats look like typos.

    Bruce Arthur @bruce_arthur

    At some point the Jays are going to stop congratulating home run hitters in the dugout and just nod, like when people arrive at the office

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    The Blue Jays have scored 589 runs as of August 27th. The next best team is the Yankees at 489 runs.

    That's 100 more runs than the next best offence in baseball. That shouldn't be able to happen.

    Put another way, the distance between the Blue Jays and the second-best team is larger than the distance between the second and 25th best team.

    If you put every Jays home run this season to a thumping base beat the resulting song would last two minutes and forty seconds.

    7. Usually high-offence teams are balanced out by poor defence. Not the Jays.

    Via deadspin.com

    Have fun hitting the ball into the outfield.

    8. Their unhittable 20-year-old closer that they pulled out of nowhere.

    Via gph.is

    No one knew Roberto Osuna's name at the beginning of the year. Now he's one of the best closers in baseball.

    Also at least once every time he pitches the announcers will make a reference to him formerly pitching in a Mexican league and having "ice running through his veins."

    9. Marcus Stroman's endlessly endearing twitter feed.

    Marcus Stroman @MStrooo6

    One of those is a strike. Sheesh!

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    Get better from your inexplicable freak injury soon, Marcus.

    10. If you live in Canada, your cell phone bill is partly responsible for building a great baseball team.

    Via giphy.com

    Despite being owned by the mult-billion dollar telecom giant Rogers, the Jays languished for years near the bottom of the league in terms of how much money they spent on players. As recently as three seasons ago they were 23rd out of 30 teams in payroll.

    Toronto traded for the expensive contracts of pitcher Mark Buehrle and shortstop Jose Reyes. Then they signed catcher Russel Martin to the most expensive deal in team history. Then they flipped Reyes for the even more expensive (but better) shortstop Troy Tulowitzki.

    That extra money you pay for the Food Network? That 20 bucks you had to shell out last month for going over your data limit? At least you can take solace in knowing a tiny fraction of that went towards making the Blue Jays better.