​WASHINGTON — The go-ahead run was driven home on a 58.2 mph ground ball. Victory was preserved only when the All-Star closer made a rare two-inning appearance. A happy flight back to Canada ensued, but the runway to it was bumpy.It might be oversimplifying matters to say the 2026 Toronto Blue Jays can be summed up in a 5-2 victory over the Washington Nationals on Wednesday, July 29, a conquest that more than one player described as “grindy.”Then again, sometimes a smaller scene within a vaster canvas tells an entire story.With just three games remaining before Major League Baseball’s Aug. 3 trade deadline, the Blue Jays are still riddled with an identity crisis.In name, they are the defending American League champions, returning with a different but highly similar team.By record, they are just 50-59, maddeningly inconsistent given the great expectations that greeted this season.On the balance sheet, they continue drawing overflow crowds from across Canada to Rogers Centre – yet their superstar slugger has yet to hit a home run there this season.And according to the AL standings, they are just five games out of a wild card berth, albeit with six teams to vault to get into playoff position.It is an unenviable predicament, one that the Blue Jays of a year ago could’ve scarcely imagined when they won 94 games and the AL East, performed brilliantly and brazenly through the playoffs all the way to World Series Game 7, where their hearts were ripped out by the Los Angeles Dodgers two outs shy of a championship.Little did they know something even tougher was around the corner.“It just came easier last year,” reliever Jeff Hoffman tells USA TODAY Sports. “It’s a very similar group to last year, and it was so easy. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, we have to fight to get to this identity as a team.’ It was just us.“This year, it feels like it’s a little bit of a battle to be us.”Now, the team searching for something resembling its old self could be breaking up. Baseball orthodoxy says the 12th – place team in a league where only six reach the playoffs should sell off assets and plan for a brighter day.Yet a variety of factors could conspire to make these Blue Jays different. At least the fellows in the clubhouse hope so.’I wouldn’t be surprised if we added’George Springer and Kevin Gausman were the free agent bell cows for this generation of Blue Jays, signing $150 million and $110 million deals in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Now, both are on expiring contracts, with some control over their futures.Springer, with more than 10 years’ service time and five in Toronto, can block any trade, and Gausman can block trades to eight teams. Both are in wait-and-see mode and, by many accounts, so too is the Toronto front office.The baseball industry widely expects this deadline to pick up in the last possible hours, due to the preponderance of contenders and the uncertainty facing many teams in the final days. And the Blue Jays have several c