ST. PETERSBURG -- Back up the mountain the Blue Jays go.

Everything was new Wednesday, even for a team that looks so similar to the one from a year ago. Players pulled bats from plastic sleeves and swung them slowly, feeling their weight and imagining what would cause the first scuff mark. They tried on new hats, bending the brims just right, and stretched their hands inside new batting gloves, baseball’s version of walking up and down the store aisle in a new pair of shoes.

Now, it’s time for the Blue Jays to prove it.

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They’ve stood near the summit three times in the past four seasons, but each time, came tumbling back down after 2-0 sweeps in the AL Wild Card Series. If there’s a secret sauce or magic elixir that can get teams over the hump in the postseason, no one has discovered it yet, but the Blue Jays started by staring their recent failures in the eye.

“Including myself, we didn’t do the job, period,” Vladimir Guerrero Jr. said through a club interpreter. “We didn’t do the job. It happened already and it’s in the past. We’re focusing on the 2024 season, which starts tomorrow.”

As Guerrero spoke, another round of Blue Jays hitters stepped onto the field for a round of batting practice on the eve of Opening Day. Four games in St. Petersburg are followed by three in Houston and three in New York, a grueling start to the season for an organization which needs to get off to a good start. These past few seasons have been a lesson in the value of tiebreakers -- both within the division and in the AL Wild Card race -- so there’s no such thing as “early” in 2024.

This all lives in an even harsher light now given how 2023 came to such a sudden, uncomfortable end. José Berríos had to live with that all offseason after being yanked early from one of the best performances of his career, so it’s fitting that he’ll be the man on the mound Opening Day.

“Obviously, everybody knows how last season ended,” Berríos said. “But we are grown men and we talked. We are clear with everything. We’ve turned the page already, and this is a great moment, a great opportunity to restart the season, the relationship, and start good things moving forward.”

We’ve heard so many of these players, from the young core of Guerrero and Bo Bichette to the veterans, talk about how this team is no longer young. The years of being happy to be there are over, and along with these three quick exits in the Wild Card round has come a reputation. Bichette said early in camp this February that the Blue Jays are being doubted, and he’s right, as Bichette so often is. The Blue Jays are no longer the hot pick to make a World Series run, no longer the projections darlings.

The players in that clubhouse have done and said all of the right things in camp, though. There’s been a different message than past years and a different level of urgency, one which comes from the reality now facing them. The early exits in 2020, ‘22 and ‘23 -- not to mention the near miss in ‘21 with one of the best lineups in franchise history -- will all go away with a legitimate run. Suddenly, they’d be looked back on as the buildup to something great.

It’s time to prove that’s possible, though. Whether the Blue Jays win 87 or 93 games won’t matter much for how this team is viewed, as long as they’re in the postseason. It’s about getting over that hurdle that keeps tripping them. Whether Guerrero hits 29 home runs or 47 won’t matter much, either, unless they can reach that mountaintop. As Guerrero said Wednesday, “We are nine, not just me.”

It’s all about October, and in the meantime, it’s all about setting themselves up to change the narrative.

Regardless of how they get there, the expectations are simple.

“To compete and ultimately contend for a World Series,” general manager Ross Atkins said.

All of the pieces are in place, just as they have been in recent years, but the stakes have never felt higher for this core. Guerrero and Bichette have two years of control remaining while Danny Jansen is in the last year of his contract. If this group is going to win together, it has to happen soon, and “soon” begins at 4:10 p.m. ET on Thursday.