There's a new managerial free agent the Blue Jays should target for their coaching staff

The Toronto Blue Jays are facing one of the most consequential periods in franchise history. They just finished off a rather meek September in which they went 7-16 to cap off an extremely down year. There is uncertainty around this team and hope that they can sign their franchise superstar. On a larger level, do they really want to send the message that everyone is safe after such a disappointing campaign? Can they bring in some external faces to the coaching staff? Who would make a good candidate for such roles?

Enter Skip Schumaker. Schumaker just brought his former Marlins squad to Canada and they laid a beating on the Toronto Blue Jays in the final three contests of 2024. Not that the results mean anything to a Jays club that long ago pulled the plug, but they clearly play with a level of spark that belies their talent. Whispers around the game always seem to suggest that Schumaker gets his players to play hard and it showed in these three meaningless games. In fact, Schumaker didn't manage the last two games because he had to attend a family medical issue. Here's hoping that everything is OK.

Schumaker managed in South Beach for two seasons, his first season representing a solid success by Miami standards that earned him NL Manager of the Year honors. This past season represented a shipwreck from the very beginning, a club that started 0-9 and traded away its best offensive player on May 4th. Unfortunately, a lot of that was preordained because the club did next to nothing to improve in the winter and made some sketchy leadership decisions in the front office. Schumaker naturally wanted no part of a rebuild and it was leaked earlier this year that he had asked the Marlins to have his contract option for 2025 removed. So, a lame duck manager was set to take the reins in South Florida and the results were inevitable.

Fast forward and Schumaker is a hot candidate on this winter's free agent managerial/coaching market. Schumaker should have his pick of jobs and may already be linked to an open Cincinnati Reds job.

His fit north of the border may be accelerating by the minute. The Blue Jays are starting to offer up sacrificial lambs, firing hitting coach Guillermo Martinez after a handful of seasons in the position. Not to be outdone, but the team is at least creating the impression of change by also announcing that assistant pitching coach Jeff Ware and field coordinator Gil Kim won’t be returning to the major-league staff. David Howell, another assistant pitching coach, will also be re-assigned. Only time will tell if these changes amount to anything, but it certainly increases the flexibility Toronto should have to bring in an outside voice like Schumaker.

Schumaker played for three teams in an 11 year major league career and posted decent yet unspectacular numbers. Always one to play hard, he slashed .278, with 28 home runs, a .337 on-base percentage and a 91 OPS+ during his career. He famously drove in the only run in the St. Louis Cardinals' 1-0 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in the 2011 NLDS.

He may be welcomed by a Toronto offense that is struggling on all fronts. Whatever they have been doing isn't working and the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Something needs to be done to an offense that only had three qualified players with an above league average OPS (Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Spencer Horwitz and Justin Turner). At the very least, Schumaker should be able to instill solid fundamentals and get the team to start hitting more in the clutch. Upper management can work out the details in regards to the other coaches, but Schumaker should be given a chance to instill his offensive philosophies since he has actually played at the major league level.

You might ask why he would settle for a job in Toronto when he can be a manager somewhere else. But have you seen some of these openings? Would he really want to take the reins of a dysfunctional White Sox squad or a small-market Reds team that may exhibit some of the same problems he had in Florida? The point is that these teams may not be good landing spots because they are flawed teams anyway. Instead, it may be a wiser idea to wait out this winter and take a lower-profile coaching job.

In any event, the Blue Jays can't afford to be complacent during this most important time. They need to rework their whole operation. The recent coaching shuffles are a step in this direction. Schumaker is a talented individual that can help in any number of areas and should be one of the first calls Toronto makes. It may cost them a pretty penny. At the very least, he could be a manager-in-waiting if John Schneider doesn't make it through the whole season.