SEATTLE — As Blue Jays manager John Schneider took two steps onto the field Thursday night, every conversation he had with Max Scherzer played in his brain like a stop-motion movie.
That reminder, general manager Ross Atkins said recently, is Schneider’s foundation. The fourth-year manager possesses an increased ability to recite specific plays from specific games, even months or years later. In his mind, he constructed a baseball Rolodex, which he used to determine whether a screaming Scherzer was telling the truth.
Midway through the Blue Jays’ 8-2 Game 4 win over the Seattle Mariners, Schneider drew on that stored knowledge to determine whether to believe a likely future Hall of Famer, who insisted it was good to keep pitching. Schneider eventually left Scherzer to finish the fifth round, then allowed him to return later. The result was further proof of the manager’s evolution.
“The more you learn, the faster you learn,” Schneider said during a conversation in his office last month, “that’s the one competitive advantage that will never go away. How to adapt to the things you’ve missed.”
It’s these cases – every decision, good or bad – that Schneider now learns from. It’s these lessons that have made Schneider more comfortable than ever in his role. What he calls a competitive edge has helped him guide the Blue Jays to within two wins of the World Series. And in doing so, his perception of his pitcher in the moment helped create what became the final flourish of what was a memorable October.
Schneider’s lowest points as a manager have been widely documented through thousands of written words, hours of television and endless radio talk shows devoted to dissection. Decisions that work, not so much. Such is the life of a big league manager, especially one whose team was swept in the playoffs two years in a row.
Some began adding more mistakes to the list when the Blue Jays lost two games at the Rogers Center to start the ALCS – when Schneider proposed more pitching changes for fans to debate. But only one man is responsible for learning from these moments. Schneider must show up the next day and make another pick in a tense October round, just as he did Thursday by sticking with Scherzer.
“You have to manage people,” John Schneider said. “You have to manage feelings and emotions.” (Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
When he thinks about the decisions he learned the most from, two moments immediately come to mind. He has many more he’s happy to share, but the first two are the ones you’re probably thinking about: removing Kevin Gausman in Game 2 of the 2022 Wild Card Series, which sparked Toronto’s collapse against the Mariners, and prematurely ending José Berríos’ 2023 playoff debut in Minnesota.
For some, the lesson from these picks might be to stick with starting pitchers. Let the rotation horses work, like they did in baseball’s glory days.. The story, however, is more nuanced. According to Schneider, the real conclusion is deeper.
“You have to manage people,” Schneider said. “You have to manage feelings and emotions.”
Management takes place before the decision, not during it. That happened when the Jays signed Scherzer in February, and Schneider began building a repertoire of conversations from which he consulted when crunch time arrived in Game 4. Even before the 41-year-old signed a deal with the Blue Jays, Schneider thought about the inevitable moment when he would have to go to the mound and make the call.
Remove Mad Max in the middle of a round, or let it stay?
But experience has taught Schneider to anticipate.
In May, months before he found himself making a critical decision in this same ballpark, Schneider gathered the entire starting rotation into a room. Toronto’s starting group is made up of veterans, guys who certainly grew up old school. Schneider felt the need to explain, to get everyone on the same page. They talked about the difficulty of facing a lineup for the third time. He explained how pitching coach Pete Walker and the rest of Toronto’s coaching staff make decisions, such as when a middle reliever’s first pitch is more effective than a workhorse’s 96th. Schneider asked the pitchers’ opinions. He heard them.
The next day, Schneider sacked Bowden Francis inning after inning against the Mariners. He let the right-hander take a second trip up the order, then a third. At that point, he was the Jays starter who had paid the harshest penalty for the third time. On paper, he seemed like the obvious choice to retire early. Yet in what became a 6-3 victory, Schneider pushed Francis to record only his third quality start of the season. When Schneider finally walked to the mound in the seventh to take the ball, members of the rotation gathered near the dugout railing and laughed.
“I said to myself, ‘See, you can do this. I’m not saying it’s impossible,'” Schneider said. “I wanted them to remember the things we talk about that go into decision-making.”
It’s these conversations that allow the 2025 Blue Jays to work together. The team’s veterans, including Chris Bassitt and Kevin Gausman, say they are more in tune with the organization’s front office than ever. It is Schneider, the connective tissue between players and managers, who is responsible for developing this bond. He manages people.
Scherzer entered Thursday’s outing with a 1.073 OPS against a third-time lineup. If Baseball Reference could talk, it would have yelled at Schneider to end Scherzer’s outing at 4 2/3 innings with a run against. That would have been a defensible decision for a guy who hadn’t pitched in weeks and hadn’t recorded a sixth-inning out since mid-August. But Schneider walked to the mound with all the past conversations cataloged in his mind, each lesson illuminating every step. He returned to the dugout without a baseball in his hand.
There will be no post-match debate over Schneider’s decision. This will be celebrated. This is what happens when decisions work and teams win. There are figures, projects, advice and numerous meetings, but it is Schneider who must enter the field. It is the manager who must make the decision and stand in front of the cameras to explain it. Schneider has learned to accept this market.
“You make the best decision in real time based on what you see,” Schneider said. “No matter how it goes, you’re good with it.”
Schneider’s wife, Jessy, asks him the same question every offseason: “Do you still love him?”
His answer, always, is yes.
“Then find out,” Jessy said.
Each spring, Schneider doesn’t hesitate to once again embark on a months-long baseball journey that will certainly end too soon for 29 teams. Every year he hopes to get better. He makes mistakes and aspires to learn from them. He is the product of every decision and interaction during his 23-year career in professional baseball, a career that began as a deep catcher in the minors for the Blue Jays, and has since evolved to the position he currently holds. He leads the same franchise deep into the playoffs.
It’s a career, like anyone else’s, riddled with mistakes and defensible decisions gone wrong. But Schneider learned from his own, or at least tried to, and on Thursday those lessons served him well as he trusted the word of a screaming pitcher and pushed his Jays one step closer to their ultimate goal.
“It’s fulfilling as a s—,” Schneider said. “Because this game is so difficult.”
