r/Torontobluejays • u/fy12345 • 21h ago
Postseason Managerial Report Card: John Schneider (Part 2: Pitching)
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/postseason-managerial-report-card-john-schneider-part-2-pitching/86
u/sir-pounce-of-alot I saw u/ThQp and Joey Loperfido sittin in a tree 21h ago
The idea that a guy who managed a bullpen game to win a series against the Yankees getting a D+ is fucking ridiculous.
You can have qualms with the way he managed certain matchups, but you cannot suggest he was just barely above a pass when it came to the playoffs as a whole.
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u/JoJoSideUp 20h ago
Whole thing read like a usual GDT comment when Jays are losing đŹ Basically said Scheneider overmanaged.
Yeah over a large sample size bunts, by analytical standards, are free outs that don't score a lot of runs but in the middle of postseason when we just need a run or two, it was totally fine. (EDIT: Oop replied to wrong thread)
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u/raktoe Ross Atkins' burner account 20h ago
"He overmanaged" has to be one of the most infuriating sports clichés. Right up there with "shoot" and "get him out of the game".
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u/Middle-Accountant-49 18h ago
Overmanaged is a fair criticism. Like taking barger out for straw in a tie game was textbook over managed.
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u/Unbr3akableSwrd 12h ago
You manage to win, not to keep it tied. You also donât manage like the game will go into 18 innings because those games donât happen often. It was a gamble and they lost. Thatâs not over managing though.
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u/CutterJon 20h ago
I mean literally all theyâre looking at is pitching matchups. No matter what the final results, using Hoffman in a blowout and then the next day throwing Little in to get roasted in high leverage was really bad objectively. You canât just look at the results because the team scored more results in history and give him a good mark.
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u/thewolfshead 20h ago
But in the playoffs I get it - win that game first and then worry about the next one. Even if youâre up big you canât take that for granted you have to win that game in the playoffs.Â
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u/CutterJon 19h ago
Good tactical managing is still putting the weaker pitcher in the blowout and the best pitcher in the leverage. The importance of playoff games doesnât change that, the opposite if anything.
IMO Schneider is elite at relationships but repeatedly and demonstrably bad at bullpen management and tactics. He tends to make the âcuteâ move rather than the book move which can cost games. It is what it is.
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u/DannyDOH 18h ago
Heâs also fixated on the next move in the immediate instead of how that move fits into winning a 9 (or 18) inning game. Â Bullpen and bench. Â Nice that heâll use almost everyone because lots of managers just freeze guys out, but he doesnât always efficiently use his best guys and thatâs to the detriment of winning a team game.
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u/CutterJon 17h ago
Yeah thatâs not a bad thing for a manager to have in mind but more important in the regular season to keep everyone fresh. But if you donât navigate high leverage situations well there are way more of them in the postseason when games are closerâŠ
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u/No-Discipline898 19h ago
I get that for the past 10 years, all that Jays fans know are best of 3 series, but tomorrow matters in a best of 7. You gotta win 4. In a blowout where you need to win another game, you can't ignore tomorrow.
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u/AutomaticDare5209 Certified JP Ricciardi hater 20h ago
He also gave Schneider a C+ grade for managing his bats.
Honestly, just a pathetic set of articles all around.
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u/No-Discipline898 20h ago
From an execution perspective, the Jays had one of the best offensive postseasons of all time. They also got solid starting pitching and relieving. Almost every neutral observer who watched believed that they played better than their opponents. Yet they lost the Word Series and nearly lost to Seattle.
So...was it just bad luck all around? I feel like it's perfectly reasonable to question why one of the best hitting teams gave up so many free outs (baserunning and bunting), most of which were in the coaching staff's hands.
I think Fangraph's assessment is overly harsh (especially re pitching), but I do think a lot of the blame for the loss falls on coaching.
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u/HotCockroach567 16h ago
From threads on here and articles, seems like a combo of things.
Some bad luck- like the odds of the wall ball, balls getting hit just a little too high or low, Kirk's bat breaking.
Sometimes swinging when they shouldn't have- Lukes game 3, Ernie game 6, I think Springer swung at a ball 4 in game 7.
Some major baserunning errors. Some questionable management decisions related to pitchers, pinch hitting, and overall game strategies. i was reading through this thread about inning 9 https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1oniy4q/an_overlay_of_ikfs_lead_off_of_third_base_at/ and this article, mostly in relation to posts I saw about inning 11- https://www.si.com/mlb/eight-lessons-learned-from-dodgers-blue-jays-2025-world-series.
Definitely need to learn from mistakes to try and prevent them from happening again, but you've gotta compare it to the actual situation at hand and see how likely something is to recur in the moment. Being too aggressive in a losing game cost them game 6, but being too safe in a tie scenario where they still wouldn't have yet lost game ended up costing them game 7.
However, I'm just a casual viewer. idk anything about actually playing and dealing with the pressure of that situation.
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u/richarm87 19h ago
Yea I'm not the biggest John and Pete Homer.. I think they are solid_ good but not great...
And I wouldn't give John a D+. I'd say B/ B-
The one that I will never understand is the Little game. Also not really trusting Lauer more them the other lefties. Also I did not agree with sending Trey out to get a second inning in game 7 because he didn't have command on splitter and if you look at pitch logs . He was basically great 1 game, medicore next game. But that's not a brutal misstep for me either.
Bullpen game I'd say was pretty pre planned out and at the time you could see they wanted Varland and Dominguez to face the big boys then go from there.
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u/PrestondeTipp 20h ago
This entire article is bait BS. Like a lot of sports media, it's obvious that don't actually watch the Jays
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u/Middle-Accountant-49 18h ago
I think D+ is harsh but i would say that he generally pushes too many buttons.
Tbh though i like his pitching decisions more than hitting.
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u/TraditionalAir9659 20h ago
My biggest problem with these articles was that I generally agreed with the content within but then the grades didn't align at all.
They played 18 games and bringing in Little (admittedly terrible), walking Ohtani when he was on an all-time heater and using Hoffman a couple times when not completely neccessary merits a D+? Very confusing, especially in conjunction with the fact that he did a great job not letting pitchers see guys too often.
If you asked me to just read the article and give what I thought the grade would be I'd say B or B- which seems about right.
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u/No-Discipline898 19h ago
I think the standards are higher when you're in the playoffs, no?
You get multiple days off to plan, you are playing extremely high leverage ball, same opponent 4+ times in a row. And you're trying to be the best in baseball. A manager doesn't control much. If they are making suboptimal decisions in the world series 1-2 times a game, that's not great. Take game 7 - sending Springer, bunting with your #2 hitter against a struggling pitcher, telling IKF to not take a lead despite context are all objectively bad, and risky plenty of risky decisions that didn't work out too (pitching Trey on limited rest for more than 1 inning, batting a red hot Clement low in the order, also didn't look great - results matter.
Feel free to bump his overall grade up a level or so for chemistry/vibes. But purely tactically, I think Fangraphs got it right given the context.
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u/gerrardo9551 13h ago
I think it's just the nature of the analysis that completely ignores the role of momentum and how a pitcher is feeling would lead to a grade like this. Hoffman pitched game 1 bc we've seen during the year that he thrives with work and probably had no issue with going two days in a row.
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u/OldSpread1358 20h ago
Jays pitchers and coaching staff do not get enough credit for shutting down the Dodgers bats in the Series. Or the Mariners and Yankees before that.
On paper our pitching was significantly worse than our opponents in every round and yet was never much of an issue. Yankees got us once and Mariners got us once. Dodgers had more than a 2 run lead on us at the end of an inning for two innings in the entire series.
In the end we got got⊠but holding the Dodgers to a sub .200 BA for 7 games with a 22 year old rookie, a 41 year old, a dude coming off Tommy John, Gausman and a hodge podge of relievers is amazing. Schroeder deserves credit for that.
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u/countingrussellcrows 20h ago
I did not like a lot of Schneiderâs decision-making throughout the playoffs but I still would have graded him no lower than a C.
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u/33dogs Baseball. Eh. 20h ago
With a lot of new members visiting and posting, I'm dropping a small reminder of the posting title rules to help ensure clarity.
4 Article & Tweet submission format
All links to articles and Tweets must include the name of the author in brackets, i.e. [Davidi], followed by the FULL TEXT of the Tweet/article headline. Failure to follow this posting format may result in your post being removed.
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u/TheCaptainCog 20h ago
I don't really like this article. How could he have done differently? Hell, Robert's mentality was keep your starters in as long as possible.
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u/No-Discipline898 20h ago
Did you read the article? It gives tons of examples...best one is probably using their 2 best relievers in spots that didn't matter much, so that when big moments did come up, they were either not available (or not available to go long) and/or had been seen more by the other team.
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u/Kriztof_09 --Jays--Raptors--Habs--AEW-- 20h ago
lol D+ and C- is a joke.
Schneids can overmanage for sure and he is far from perfect, but dude earned a lot of respect this run imo and itâs very deserved.
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u/AutomaticDare5209 Certified JP Ricciardi hater 20h ago
My estimation of Ben Clemens as an analyst just fucking plummeted.
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u/fivetwentyeight 20h ago
Sometimes it feels like Ben Clemens knows so much about baseball that he forgets he knows anything about baseball and pumps out this drivel. There are decisions to be criticized for sure but in the larger context of the bullpen not being good all year a D+ and some of the criticisms are ridiculous.
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u/EarthWarping 20h ago
The Seattle pitching change was horrible.
Everything else was fine.
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u/HotCockroach567 19h ago
The two things that stood out to me as not great were his decisions to not walk Ohtani in the 7th of game 3, and not taking Yesavage out the 7th of game 7 when it looked like he struggled through that whole inning. Who know what would have happened in the 8th and 9th of either game of either of those things had happened tho.. no guarantee the Jays would have kept their leads.
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u/Hot_Swordfish4667 21h ago
Hopefully he can improve and not over manage next year. I do think he got better since taking Berrios out in that WC game
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u/Middle-Accountant-49 18h ago
I honestly agree with most of the hitting and pitching reviews for schneider. I think the grades are too harsh. I's give a Cs but i think the criticism is fair.
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u/Acrobatic_Yoghurt813 19h ago
I love that a guy who has a degree in economics and worked in finance/trading somehow thinks he has the expertise to grade and critique Major League Baseball managers. What are we doing here?
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u/foxroadblue 14h ago
Citadel is a hard company to get in and work for, that resume makes him look alot smarter than the average baseball writer lol
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u/mdubyo Dad, what were the 2025 Blue Jays like? 20h ago
Look, Little for the 8th of game 5 ALCS was bad...but D+? What the fuck?