Gibbons’s style fits veteran Jays

CLEARWATER, Fla. — On one of the closing days of this long, grinding spring training season, Jays manager John Gibbons picked up a bat and began hitting grounders.

“Go Gibby,” yelled one of the Jays on a hot Tuesday afternoon here, and there were cheers all around.

A Blue Jays roster heavy with veteran players and proven superstars might not be the easiest group in the major leagues to keep on an even keel. And you can bet it isn’t one that responds eagerly to overmanaging or phoney motivational tricks.

Enter Gibbons, the mostly affable, usually understated skipper whose personality and coaching style seems to be the ideal fit.

“He’s definitely the type of manager that this group of guys need because we do have a lot of alphas in here,” Jays centre fielder Kevin Pillar said. “He let’s us police ourselves. He doesn’t say a whole lot but when he does, people listen. He’s a player’s coach and with this group, that works well.”

Presumably Gibbons’ style and acceptance from the players is a big reason he’s about to be rewarded with a multi-year contract extension that should keep him around as long as the core group remains contenders.

There are still details to be finalized, but a team source confirms the basics of the contract will extend through 2020 with the final year a club option. The Jays had hoped to have it finalized before the 2017 season begins and that still remains a possibility. So why Gibbons? After a year for team president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins to get comfortable with his personality — though both parties claim it didn’t take nearly that long — it was clear the synergy was solid.

In taking the long baseball road to managing one of the top teams in the sport, Gibbons has earned an honest reputation of being an easy dude to like. His easy going nature shines whether his audience is the media, the fans or the players.

Lest you think he’s a pushover though, Pillar can tell you a different story, one that involved a careeraltering moment.

We take you back to June of 2014 when the Jays centre fielder was preparing for an at-bat at the Rogers Centre in a tie game with the Yankees and Gibbons decided to replace him with a pinch hitter. Then 25, and well on the way to establishing himself as a big league player, Pillar snapped.

His reward for tossing a bat down the tunnel behind the Jays dugout was to be turfed to Triple-A Buffalo for disciplinary reasons. Gibbons may be a player’s manager, but he wasn’t about to be shown up.

“I’ve had some highs and lows with him and I’ve definitely grown up under his watch,” said a candid Pillar. “I look back on the incident we had and it was definitely a defining moment in my career individually.

“That’s not to say that if that didn’t happen I wouldn’t have matured and changed my ways, but that was a wakeup call that maybe I needed. It scared me.”

Pillar was at the stage of his career where he felt a bad night at the plate didn’t merit the hook. But Gibbons emphatically made his point, telling the media that “there was no room for selfish play” in baseball.

In a private audience with Pillar, the words were much more pointed.

“Him saying what he did to me behind closed doors and not knowing if I’d ever get an opportunity to go back up there … it was definitely a defining moment in our relationship as well,” Pillar said. “When I came back, he embraced me with open arms and told me to be myself. He explained his thought process and where he was coming from.

“For him to be a man and tell me he understood I was a young kid and just wanted to make an impact with the way that I play, it meant a lot. He told me to never lose that edge and continue to play the way I play.”

What does a soon to be threeyear-old incident have to do with today’s Jays, a high-powered mix that includes young stars such as pitcher Marcus Stroman and veteran thoroughbreds like Josh Donaldson, Troy Tulowitzki and Jose Bautista?

The way Pillar sees it, the players are well aware that they can have success under Gibbons and that when he is demanding, it’s in the right way.