The Blue Jays already have dispatched advance scouts to major-league cities and ballparks all over America in anticipation of the club’s first post-season appearance since 1993.

Exciting times.

The Jays have returned to sporting relevancy in this city and indeed in this country after 22 years of fan frustration. They haven’t quite arrived yet with a stamped, guaranteed ticket onto the post-season dance floor, but the magic numbers for the Jays’ elimination of the Twins, Astros and Angels are dwindling. It could happen this weekend that the Jays assure themselves of at least a wild-card. The team won’t pop champagne when it happens, but long-suffering fans might.

It’s perhaps greedy to think this but, given a choice, who would the Jays want to play? What are the best matchups? If the regular season was to end right now, the Royals would host the winner of the AL wild-card one-and-done game between the Astros and Yankees in the Bronx. The Jays, with the second-best record among division winners, would play host to the Texas Rangers.

So let’s have a look at potential matchups, starting with the toughest:

YOUR CALL!

Texas Rangers: The Jays don’t want to play Texas in a five-game division series in which left-hander Cole Hamels and right-hander Yovani Gallardo can make three of the five starts. Toronto would much prefer seven games if they had to meet them, but they may not have a choice.

Gallardo is 2-0 in two starts against the Jays this season, with a 0.00 ERA, and the Jays have demonstrated little ability to solve him. Meanwhile, Hamels has been the equivalent of David Price for the Rangers. When they made the Hamels deal, they took off.

Offensively they match well with the Jays, led by MVP candidate Prince Fielder, Adrian Beltre and Delino DeShields Jr., who was a thorn in their side in a recent series. Starters Colby Lewis and Derek Harrison can be tough on the Jays also. This is Toronto’s most likely first-round matchup, and also the least desirable.

Kansas City Royals: The Jays beat up on the Royals at the Rogers Centre, winning three of four and losing only when Mark Lowe stepped off a plane and coughed up a lead. Even then, the Jays and Royals set up this post-season series with a level of dislike and vitriol that is quite special.

These two likely won’t meet in the first round ALDS unless the Jays slip to the wild-card. With the experience the Royals accumulated in last year’s World Series, the Jays are at a disadvantage in a seven-game series, even with the regular-season edge and the contra-performance of Johnny Cueto and the fact closer Greg Holland is being shut down for the year.

New York Yankees: On the opposite end of the Royals-Jays scenario, the Jays and Yankees can only meet in the first round if the Jays manage to catch the Royals for first overall. The Jays dominated the Yankees in the regular season, winning 13 of 19, so they gained that level of confidence where the Bronx and the ghosts of Monument Park don’t intimidate them any more.

If Nate Eovaldi and Masahiro Tanaka are ready to go in the playoffs this would be a tough seven-game series, and a memorable one. The Yankee bullpen is set up the way the Royals relievers were last year, and even though the Jays bullpen has looked solid, Roberto Osuna in October will be two months deeper into a season than he ever has been before at age 20.

Houston Astros: The Jays have had a horrible track record against the Astros in the regular season, even before Houston joined the American League. But the Astros are even worse off in terms of playoff experience than are the Jays. The Jays and Astros were compared in terms of home runs early this year, but the difference is Jays hitters were hitters, not just hit-or-miss sluggers.

The Astros had control of their division for much of the season and the Jays finished the home-and-home when the Astros were hot. So even though Jose Altuve and Chris Carter and the rest were hot at the time, the Jays have a better chance of winning this series. However, when the Jays played the Astros, Carlos Correa was still a minor leaguer. But still, the Jays would like to play them.

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Twins, Angels, Indians: These are the three wild cards in the wild-card race. Of the three, the Angels have been the hottest, but the Jays can handle them either at home or in Anaheim. When they squared off out West in August, Josh Donaldson buried Mike Trout in the MVP faceoff.

The Indians have Terry Francona as manager, who is the best pound-for-pound World Series manager in history with a record of 8-0 for the Red Sox in 2004 and ’07. The Jays can’t handle young right-hander Danny Salazar in a short series and the Indians have power arms as starters that could give Toronto problems. Michael Brantley is clutch against the Jays but this won’t likely happen.

As for the Twins, you have to love manager Paul Molitor for his anti-analytics stance where, at the Winter Meetings he railed on to this columnist about the anti-Torii Hunter arguments and said he believed in Hunter because he actually watched him play. He has proven to be a great hire by the Twins, as for most of the season they over-achieved. But the odds of a Jays-Twins series are very long.

But one thing is for sure — the Jays will be dancing in October.