CHARLIE IN CHARGE
Blue Jays name Montoyo 13th manager in club history
LOS ANGELES — 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 Blue Jays have hired to replace John Gibbons as the team’s 13th manager didn’t have much of a bigleague playing career — just five at-bats, in fact.
But in 1993, while with the triple-A 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 under way.
As per custom with such transactions at this time of year, the Jays made the announcement official on Thursday — an off-day in World Series play — signing Montoyo 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 — Montoyo now gets his big shot in the big leagues.
“Managing a team that represents an entire nation is incredibly special,” Montoyo said on 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 types who see Montoyo as a weak, offthe-radar choice.
In reality, Montoyo’s appointment is in line with the type of hire many teams are going for 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 off 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 information 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 in background, well, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on the way, that wouldn’t hurt, either.
In Atkins’ opinion, Montoyo checked off all of those boxes and more, an opinion cemented during a final interview in Toronto on Tuesday. It is believed that in that talk, 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 prior to the end of the World Series and that, too, has been accomplished. Now Montoyo can be involved in preparations for GM 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. 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 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 another Rays assistant, Rocco Baldelli, who was named the Twins’ new manager on Thursday.
Atkins and his staff were also no doubt impressed with Montoyo’s role in developing several Rays stars at their triple-A affiliate, the Durham Bulls. High on the list of importance for the new Jays manager is to steward the rise of Guerrero — by all accounts, the bilingual Montoyo has the personality to do just that.
Atkins can only hope that Montoyo possesses similar savvy and people skills as Alex Cora when the Red Sox named him their new manager a year ago. If that’s the new-age model for an MLB manager, it’s looking pretty good right now.
Montoyo will certainly be in sharp contrast to the lovable, old-school style of Gibbons, which Jay fans will begin to see when the new manager is unveiled at a news conference in Toronto on Monday.
We’re betting that a quarter of a century after that experience in Montreal, he won’t have any trouble finding his new stadium.