The complicated legacy of John Schneider

Melting down

It all started last year in the second game of the Wild Card round against the Mariners, when Schneider panicked and pulled starter Kevin Gausman with an 8-1 lead, then watched the team collapse in an eventual 10-9 loss which eliminated the Jays from the playoffs.

We knew that he was inexperienced, but in his first moment under the bright lights, it could not have gone much worse.

Unfortunately for the Jays, the tendency to melt down periodically has become something of a calling card this year. Here are the most spectacular and viral catastrophes to date:

May 20: “I f***ed up”

We may as well start with the most embarrassing moment of all, not necessarily a bad decision which cost the Jays the game, but a humiliating occurrence which would be among the career lowlights for any manager.

During the sixth inning of a game against the Orioles, Schneider confidently popped out of the dugout and strode to the mound to have a word with his starter Alek Manoah, who, while not cruising, was pitching one of his better games of the season, sitting on 85 pitches.

The only problem was that Schneider forgot that pitching coach Pete Walker had already been to the mound that inning, so Schneider’s visit meant he would have to take Manoah out.

“I f***ed up,” Schneider would say after the game.

Indeed.

August 29: Run Kirk Run

The other moment which probably first comes to mind when thinking about Schneider’s 2023 blunders, because, well, pretty much anything involving Alejandro Kirk running tends to stick out in the minds of fans …

Trailing 5-3 with one out in the eighth inning, the not-exactly-fleet-footed Kirk found himself on third base with pinch hitter Daulton Varsho at the plate. Surely this would be a moment to replace Kirk with a pinch runner.

Not for John Schneider.

Moments later, Varsho drove a medium depth fly ball to center, and Kirk, tagging up, was gunned out at the plate. Double play, inning over.

The decision became particularly glaring when the Jays loaded the bases with no outs in the ninth, but were only able to muster one run, losing 5-4.

September 22: Romano’s Fingernail

The freshest example of a Schneider meltdown in our memory …

With the Jays nursing a 6-5 lead entering the bottom of the ninth after an astonishing comeback from 5-0 down in Tampa Bay, Schneider turned to Jordan Romano, who had not blown a save since May 20, to close it out.

From the first couple of pitches, it was clear that something was wrong. Romano kept glancing down at his finger, fiddling with it. We would later learn that this was the result of a cracked fingernail acquired the day before.

Worse still, whether because of his finger or not, Romano simply didn’t have it. Three consecutive hits and the lead was lost.

Eventually, with two outs and runners on first and third, Josh Lowe stepped to the plate, a classic Rays hitter who is a star in specific situations – an .841 OPS against right-handed pitchers – and a black hole in others -- a .631 OPS against lefties.

With the light-hitting Manuel Margot on deck, it seemed that there were two clear options – intentionally walk Lowe and pitch to Margot, or pull an obviously-injured Romano in favor of the lefty Tim Mayza to face Lowe.

Schneider did neither, and Lowe promptly singled home the winning run.

July 21: Seattle … again

Some would say a true meltdown is when multiple moves blow up in your face in succession.

Facing the Mariners in what has proven to be a critical game for the playoff race, Schneider began by pulling a dominant Yusei Kikuchi, who was carving up his former team to the tune of 5.1 scoreless innings, after only 78 pitches.

Then, with the Jays clinging to a narrow 2-1 lead, Schneider declined to pinch run for Brandon Belt after he led off the eighth inning with a walk, despite having Kevin Kiermaier on the bench. Moments later, he was unable to score from second on a ringing Whit Merrifield single.

Don’t worry, it got worse. With the bases loaded and one out after Merrifield’s single, Schneider called Daulton Varsho back and sent up pinch hitter Alejandro Kirk … who promptly hit into a double play.

Having turned to the bullpen early, and already burning through Erik Swanson, Schneider was forced to watch Yimi Garcia blow the lead in the eighth, before the Mariners walked it off in the ninth.

May 1: José, Ok?

Speaking of pulling Kikuchi early only to be left with ineffective bullpen options, Schneider’s feel for when to pull a starter, and when not to, is something which has constantly been in question this season.

The most egregious example probably took place on May 1 at Fenway Park.

There, José Berrios had been doing José Berrios things, struggling with his command, lacking his best stuff, but biting down hard on the mouthpiece and gritting his way through five innings, allowing two runs despite 8 hits and a walk.

In the bottom of the fifth, Berrios had allowed hard contact to three straight batters, escaping the inning on a lineout and a double play. Visibly tiring, he was sent back out for the bottom of the sixth with the Jays clinging to a 3-2 lead. Immediately, Jarren Duran went deep, tying the game at three, and seemingly signifying the end of Berrios’ gutsy night.

Wrong.

He struck out the next batter, but when he walked the batter after that, still Schneider left him in the game. Up stepped rookie Enmanuel Valdez, who took Berrios deep for his first career home run, giving the Red Sox a 5-3 in a game they would end up winning 6-5.

August 27: Mistake by the Lake

If there is a game which can rival the Seattle game in a contest of ‘most times John Schneider can press the wrong button in a row,’ this is definitely it.

First, tied at six with Cleveland in the bottom of the ninth, Schneider called upon Cavan Biggio to bunt Danny Jansen over to third after he’d led off the inning with a double. Small ball is perhaps not the Jays’ forte, and Cavan bunted the ball straight to the pitcher, who threw out Jansen at third.

Up stepped Santiago Espinal, who worked the count to 3-0. It appeared that Brandon Belt, standing on the on-deck circle, might get a crack with the winning run in scoring position. And yet, despite the fact that Espinal was hitting .213 at the time with a .286 OBP and a mind-bogglingly low .290 slugging, Schneider gave him the green light on 3-0, and he promptly hit into an inning-ending double play.

The Guardians failed to score in the top of the tenth, meaning the Jays only needed to score the ghost runner from second in their half of the inning to win the game. With two outs, up stepped the hottest hitter on the team – Davis Schneider – with a chance to win it.

At the time, “Babe” was in the midst of going full supernova, homering in three straight games and batting .500 (7/14) with three homers, three doubles, and six RBI over his previous four starts.

Except, Davis Schneider didn’t step to the plate with the game on the line, because he’d been pulled for a pinch runner in the eighth – Kevin Kiermaier, who scored on a Varsho single which would have scored just about any runner on the team.

Kiermaier meekly grounded out to first, sending the game to the eleventh, where the Guardians would put up four, eventually winning 10-7.

August 13-25: Benching The Babe

Speaking of Davis Schneider …

We all remember Schneider bursting on the scene, famously hitting a home run in his first career at-bat, on his way to an astonishing .367/.472/1.172 slash line over his first 35 plate appearances. The strange thing was, after those first 35 plate appearances, Schneider basically fell off the map, starting only one game in the next two weeks.

Sure, his exclusion from the lineup is probably at least partially down to the front office, but still, to deprive an at-that-time-struggling offense of its hottest bat was a glaring blunder.

And when he did finally get back into the lineup? Well, he went 3/3 with a walk, a home run, a double, and three RBI, leading the Jays to victory against Cleveland. The next game, he hit another home run and another double. In fact, in 16 games afterwards, Schneider hit .380 with a .516 OBP, five home runs, nine doubles, and 14 RBI, while the Jays went 10-6.

Note that when Schneider was effectively benched between August 13-25, the team went 4-5. And in the only game he started during that time, he hit the game winning home run.

Is John Schneider the right man for the job?

Here we reach an impasse.

On one hand, if the Jays hold on over the season’s final week and earn a spot in the postseason, it’s difficult to say that the manager of a franchise who has been to the playoffs nine times in 45 years should be fired after leading the team to the playoffs.

On the other hand, a tendency to melt down is not exactly a card you want to have in your back pocket.

Certainly, it can be argued that John Schneider is young and inexperienced, and that with more age and wisdom, these meltdowns will become a mere footnote in his story. But can you really afford to have someone learning on the job for a purportedly contending team?

We don’t even know how the team will respond when it gets into a do-or-die pressure situation in the playoffs, how the memory of last year’s collapse will impact them. Sometimes, a meltdown like that is something which a core group never gets over …

So what do you think? Is John Schneider killing the Blue Jays chances, or has he been the one with his fingers in the leaking dam? Moreover, which meltdown was the worst, and are there any I'm missing? Let me know on the platform formerly known as Twitter – @WriteFieldDeep.