The Blue Jays were riding high a little more than a week ago. They had聽won four of five games and, at 12-8,聽were聽only a game shy of having the best record in the American League. They were garnering praise for scratching out runs and winning games with an offensive profile we all knew was unsustainable.
They went from 12-8 to 13-15 with seven losses in eight games, each one featuring its own brand of ugly, and now the predictable 鈥渇ire the manager鈥 calls are starting to come.
Concern for Kevin Gausman after聽an unusual 53-pitch third inning in the first game against the
John Schneider, in his 25th聽season in the Blue Jays鈥 organization, has been a lightning rod for the fans pretty much since he took over for Charlie Montoyo in July 2022. The fans’ dismay with Schneider began in the infamous ”it was 8-1” game, the second game of the 2022 wild-card series against Seattle in which the Mariners pulled off the greatest comeback in playoff history.
To this day, people complain that Jays starter Kevin Gausman was pulled too early, conveniently forgetting that the bases were loaded with two out in the sixth, that the right-hander had thrown 95 pitches and that the next hitter, Carlos Santana, had crushed a double to deep right-centre in his last at-bat.
The next year, the daggers were out for Schneider after he executed the front office’s ill-conceived “brilliant strategy” of removing a sailing Jos茅 Berr铆os in the fourth inning of the second game of their wild-card series in Minnesota.
But there is a larger point being missed by fans who want the manager’s head on a pike. John Schneider didn’t put this team together; he didn’t build a roster that has fewer home runs than any team in the major leagues but Kansas City. And he didn’t go 9-for-90 in Houston or score a measly 22 runs over the last 10 games.
Turning over a table in the clubhouse does nothing but make modern players roll their eyes. An inspirational speech only goes so far in a sport where the harder a player presses, the worse the results often are. Former manager Joe Maddon used to say the best route to baseball success is to “try easier.”
It’s not like hockey, where you can physically intimidate the opponent or win a battle in the corners. It’s not like basketball, where you can fight for a rebound or go harder after a loose ball. It’s not like football, where you can physically tear the ball out of your opponent’s hands to regain possession.
In baseball, you get your turn to hit and they get theirs.
Alan Roden, Nathan Lukes, Myles Straw and Addison Barger are the four names being considered by
The point that a coaching staff can’t make players better should have been driven home by the fact that the Jays聽overhauled their hitting coaches in the off-season聽鈥 firing Guillermo Martinez, allowing Matt Hague to leave for Pittsburgh and removing “offensive co-ordinator” from Don Mattingly’s portfolio聽鈥 and the team that was 23rd in scoring runs last year is 27th one month into this season.
The days of the cigar-chomping, fear-inspiring manager who is guided by his gut and ignores the front office are long gone. It’s all about implementing the strategies of the bosses.
You think it was Schneider’s idea to yank Berr铆os in that playoff game? Not a chance. You think he should have stood up to the smarter-than-everybody front office and gone rogue? OK, but then there would be someone else in that chair now who would never dare push back on anything.
Sure, there are in-game moves every manager makes that are head-scratchers. A big one was Schneider allowing Gausman to throw 53 pitches in the third inning of Sunday’s Game 1 loss to the Yankees, an inning in which the 34-year-old walked five before allowing a three-run double to Austin Wells that blew the game open. That call was just as much pitching coach Pete Walker’s as it was Schneider’s, and maybe even Gausman’s, too.
There were extenuating circumstances聽鈥 it was early in the first game of a doubleheader, Gausman was throwing just as hard as the inning continued, and he was one out away from getting into the dugout with the game still very much within reach聽鈥 but it’s more than fair to suggest that he should have been taken out long before Wells came to the plate.
Overall, Schneider has been a fine tactician. Fans that want the best relievers to pitch in every big spot in every close game will never agree, but that can’t happen with real human beings playing.
What it comes down to, as it always does, is the players and whether the front office has assembled enough good ones to build a playoff team.
That the Jays are running the fifth-highest payroll in the majors and just hoping to squeak into the playoffs is a damning indictment. But not of John Schneider.
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