Blue Jays manager Schneider on hot seat? That’s ridiculous
It is a lamentable right of the crazed sports fan to take a miserable two-week sample of a six-month season and demand the head of a frustrated coach or manager.
And assuming sobriety, it’s also laughably ridiculous.
Blue Jays manager John Schneider is facing some serious issues as the team prepared for the first of three games against the Twins on Friday night in Minneapolis.
He is managing a last-place team that proclaimed itself as aspirational contenders for first in the division throughout spring training and beyond.
He has a would-be ace starter in Alek Manoah who is not just lost in his ability to find the strike zone but could soon be boiling over in frustration.
And for the first time in his brief big league managerial career, he is faced with the serious challenges of getting a team in free-falling turmoil back on track.
Even with all that, Schneider is not on the hot seat. Not by a long shot. And if he is, the state of Jays management is even more rotten than the most jaded of the team’s supporters could have ranted.
Schneider does, however, have some concerns that have to be addressed over the weekend on a team that is a wildly underachieving solitary game above .500 and by the end of the weekend will have played a third of its 162-game schedule.
Of immediate concern is the task of making sure all is right in the room. There will be some Jays players who weren’t impressed by the fact that Schneider discussed with the media in Tampa the players-only meeting that was held after losing the third of four games against the division-leading Rays on Thursday.
Players only meetings may or may not solve much, but here’s the thing: Players are adamant that such business is theirs and theirs only, a point Jays third baseman Matt Chapman seemed to make when he met with the media following Thursday’s 6-3 loss to the Rays.
Then there’s the issue of the way the Jays have been losing through much of the recent 2-9 slide that has spiralled them to the basement of the AL East. Quite simply it has been hard on the eyes.
Running into outs. Allowing opposing runners to prance around the base paths like they own them. (Seven stolen bases on Thursday? Really?) And topping it off, the recent impotence with runners in scoring position that has to feel like an epidemic.
Players play, of course, but Schneider and his coaching staff need to address all of these areas in a hurry, especially as they open a series against another division leader, albeit in the weakling AL Central.
As for the gory details of the Jays’ recent abomination: They are equally as unsightly.
— The 26-25 record is pure underachievement no matter how you dice it, starting with the fact that it is four games worse than what the team was after 51 games in a 2022 season that would head further south in the summer months prior to manager Charlie Montoyo being fired.
— The Jays find themselves 10.5 games behind the Rays, compared to “just” 6.5 behind the Yankees at the same point last season. Insurmountable? No. But even as the Yankees swooned late in the season, the Jays couldn’t run them down.
— Not only are the Rays going to be a challenge to catch, the surging (and confident) Baltimore Orioles that swept the Jays in a three-game series at the Rogers Centre this past weekend are 7.5 games up on Toronto now. A young team with confidence can be a dangerous thing. The Jays would know.
— Schneider’s team is in last place. Say it out loud and let it sink in when measured against all positive pre-season prognostications.
— May is not the dog days of summer where weariness and injuries can take its toll. May is a time to establish form and build momentum for the grind that awaits. May is not the time for an 8-15 record as you fight through a gruelling stretch of 30 games in 31 days.
— The Manoah saga is getting interesting — not to mention concerning — as what appeared to be a mini meltdown in the dugout with pitching coach Pete Walker suggested on Thursday. There’s no way the big righty was pleased with the double mound visit that ended his previous start early last Friday, either.
The solutions may not be as easy as Schneider hopes, although few could reasonably argue that the Jays aren’t a better team than they’ve shown over the past two weeks in dropping series to three divisional opponents in gawd-awful fashion — the Yankees, Orioles and finally the Rays.
But the Jays hired the veteran minor league manager for a number of reasons, topped with the fact that he is a strong communicator and has established relationships with a number of players.
Now it’s on Schneider and the rest of his staff to help clean up some of the unacceptable shoddiness. But more than anything, it’s on the players and their leadership group to hammer home a sense of accountability.