Montoyo progressive hire as Jays join the new school
New manager fits in with baseball’s current trends, writes Rob Longley.
Charlie Montoyo tells a great story of his first experience in Major League Baseball, a yarn that is as Canadian as it gets.
The man the Toronto Blue Jays have hired to replace John Gibbons as the team’s 13th manager didn’t have much of a big-league playing career — just five at-bats in fact.
But in 1993 while with the tripleA Ottawa Lynx, Montoyo got a call one morning from the parent Expos to get to Montreal for a game that night as a September call-up.
Montoyo hustled to rent a car, made the drive to Olympic Stadium, got lost on his way and eventually arrived in the dugout 10 minutes before first pitch. Later that night, the native of Florida, Puerto Rico got a hit in his first big-league at-bat.
The 53-year-old is no longer a footnote in Canadian baseball history, however, now that the Jays have tagged him as the leader of the extensive, youth-driven rebuild that is well underway.
As per custom with such transactions this time of year, the Jays made the announcement official on Thursday — an off day in World Series play — signing Montoya to a three-year deal plus a team option for a fourth.
After 18 years coaching in the Tampa Bay Rays system — including management jobs at every minor-league level — Montoya now gets his big shot in the big leagues.
“Managing a team that represents an entire nation is incredibly special,” Montoyo said Thursday. “My family and I look forward to working towards the ultimate goal of winning a championship for this city.”
Those initial words may inspire some of the Jays’ fan base and may even calm some of the more jaded folks who see Montoyo as a weak off-the-radar choice.
In reality, the hiring is in line with the type of manager many teams are going to these days.
Jays general manager Ross Atkins made it clear from the outset of his search for Gibbons’ replacement that there were a number of boxes that needed to be checked for what is seen as the most important hire in his tenure to date.
The new choice had to be collaborative; in other words, keen on sharing info and ideas with both the front office and managers at all levels within the organization. He needed to be progressive in his mindset, but experienced at the major-league level, though not necessarily in the manager’s chair. And if he happened to be Hispanic, well, with Vlad Guerrero Jr. on the way, that wouldn’t hurt, either.
In Atkins’ opinion, Montoyo checked all those boxes and more, an opinion cemented during a final interview in Toronto on Tuesday, when it is believed that Montoyo got the upper hand on Joe Espada, the bench coach for the Houston Astros, who was another finalist.
“Charlie is a highly regarded leader by so many individuals in the game and we were thoroughly impressed by his experiences and approach as we learned more about him during the interview process,” Atkins said in his first public comments on Montoyo. “Charlie is passionate about the game with a superior ability to connect and relate and we are confident he will have an overwhelmingly positive influence on Blue Jays players and staff.”
Atkins had hoped to have a new manager in place before the end of the World Series and that, too, has been accomplished.
Now Montoya can be involved in preparations for general managers meetings in California in early November and the baseball winter meetings in Las Vegas in December.
With a full off-season to prepare, Montoyo can make decisions on his coaching staff. All of those under Gibbons, including pitching coach Pete Walker, have one year remaining on their contracts. The new boss can also get up to speed on the player-development side of the organization and begin to form relationships with current roster players.
Days after the disappointing 2018 season ended, Atkins hinted that he was impressed with the way the Rays and Astros teams were run with a progressive blend of analytical data and old-school instinct.
As bench coach, Montoyo would have had a front-row seat to Rays manager Kevin Cash’s ways.
It certainly put Montoyo on the Jays’ short list as it did with another Rays assistant, Rocco Baldelli, who was named the Minnesota Twins’ new manager on Thursday.
Atkins and his staff were also no doubt impressed with Montoyo’s role in developing several Rays stars, which he did with their triple-A affiliate Durham Bulls. High on the list of importance for the new Jays manager is to steward the rise of Guerrero and the bilingual Montoyo by all accounts has the personality to do just that.
Atkins can only hope that Montoyo possesses similar savvy and people skills as a signing of a year ago, when the Boston Red Sox named Alex Cora as their new manager. If that’s the new-age model for an MLB manager, it’s looking pretty good right now.
Yes, Montoyo will certainly be in sharp contrast to the lovable, oldschool style of Gibbons, which Jays fans will begin to see when the new manager is unveiled at a press conference Monday in Toronto.
We’re betting that a quarter of a century after that experience in Montreal, he won’t have any trouble finding his new stadium.
Charlie is a highly regarded leader by so many individuals in the game and we were thoroughly impressed by his experiences and approach.