There isn’t all that much for Jays’ news, which isn’t a surprise.
John Schneider came in second for the Manager of the Year award. A lot of us figured he would win, because he took the Jays from last to first
in the AL East. Of course, he was the manager when they finished last as well.
Stephan Vogt led the Guardians to first place in the last two seasons, after taking over as manager. The Guardians have finished first or second in 9 of the last 10 seasons.
I don’t know how you judge who deserves to be the Manager of the Year. I’ve often thought that the award should be ‘Coaching Staff of the Year’. The Jays coaching staff deserves that, with Schneider being a big part of that. The coaching staff (and the front office) figured out why things didn’t work last year and fixed those things.
Of course, it would be hard to pinpoint how much of that was due to the coaching staff and how much was due to the players. George Springer must have looked at the 2024 and thought, ‘I have to fix things’. Same with Bo Bichette and several of the others. So some of it had to be the players themselves.
And some was have been the coaching staff and likely the front office, who must have spent a good part of the off-season trying to figure out what wasn’t working.
I’ve seen, on Twitter, people complaining about John being ripped off. I’d hazard a guess that he really doesn’t care all that much. I’m sure he would have accepted the award happily enough, but I can’t imagine that he really cares about not winning it.
I think managing has changed since I was young. I could tell you how any two managers differed in the old days. Now managers are pretty much the same. Some might bunt a little bit more, but they pretty much all bunt at the same time. I get the feeling you could you could replace one manager with another and likely not notice a huge difference on the field. I don’t think you could have said that years ago. I think that if you had replaced Whitey Herzog with Earl Weaver, the Cardinals would have been a very different team. Putting Billy Martin in as manager always meant that starting pitchers would go deeper into the game. Deeper into games to a comic degree.
Anyway, I don’t think John coming in second in voting was a huge snub.
Buster Olney tells us that “the Toronto Blue Jays are expected to be among the biggest players in the free-agent market.”
He discusses their good chance to sign Kyle Tucker (also Ryan Finkelstein predicts that the Jays will sign Kyle for 10 years and $430 million). But then he says they will have a hard time signing Bo Bichette. But most seem to be saying that the Jays will be targeting starting and relief pitching before anything else, which works for me.
Ken Rosenthal says that the Jays are in on Pete Fairbanks, who had 27 saves for the Rays. I’d be ok with getting him.
Quick bits:
- I missed out on noting that George Springer won the Silver Slugger award for DH. Well deserved.
- John Gibbons has signed to be bench coach with the Angels.
- Finkelstein also figures the Jays to sign Framber Valdez (five years, $160 million). I have my doubts.
- The Jays are also mentioned as a possibility to get Munetaka Murakami.
