Toronto Blue Jays fire Charlie Montoyo, promote John Schneider to interim manager

The Toronto Blue Jays have fired manager Charlie Montoyo after the club failed to meet their lofty expectations in the first half of the season.

The team says bench coach John Schneider will take the role of interim manager through the end of the 2022 season. Casey Candaele, manager of the team’s Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo, has been appointed as the interim bench coach.

Speaking to the media on Wednesday, general manager Ross Atkins was willing to take the blame for the club’s recent struggles.

“I truly wanted this to work with Charlie and wasn’t able to make that happen,” Atkins said in his opening remarks.

“I am extremely disappointed where we are. I think we’re better than where we have played. Having said that, this is a collective setback, and ultimately, that starts with me. I am the one that needs to be the most accountable for that, and I have a great deal of respect for Charlie Montoyo.”

Atkins said that when the team rights the ship and starts winning again, Montoyo will have been a big part of that.

When asked if he felt that Montoyo had lost the clubhouse’s trust, Atkins answered with an emphatic “no.”

“It got to the point where I felt that a lot of good individual things were happening, and we need to be playing better as a team. I feel strongly that we can, and we will be,” Atkins said. “I feel this is one step that can help.”

The decision comes with the team having lost nine of its last 11 games, including a four-game sweep at the hands of the Seattle Mariners over the weekend.

With Schneider taking over on an interim basis, Atkins says the club went through a process of determining who would be best off serving in that role for the rest of the season and landed on the former minor-league manager.

“I am the most accountable for this not going well,” Atkins said. “I will look inward on how I can improve. I felt this decision will help us take a step in that direction.”

Montoyo finishes with a record of 236-236 through his three-and-a-half seasons as the team’s manager.

Blue Jays’ recent struggles led to Montoyo’s firing

Montoyo was hired as manager before the 2019 season, with the team signing him to a three-year contract with a club option for the fourth year. He inherited a rebuilding team, and the club’s record improved in his first three seasons at the helm.

After a playoff appearance in 2020, the team missed the playoffs by one game in 2021. Over the last two years, a series of high-profile off-season acquisitions considerably raised the team’s expectations for the 2022 season.

Toronto Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo argues with umpire Jeff Nelson after being ejected from the game during eighth inning MLB baseball action against the Oakland Athletics in Toronto Saturday, April 16, 2022. (Frank Gunn/THE CANADIAN PRESS).

The Blue Jays are currently 46-42 this season and cling to the third and final wild-card spot in the American League with only five games to go until the All-Star break. The last-place Baltimore Orioles enter Wednesday’s game only two games back of Toronto thanks to a recent winning streak.

They now turn to Schneider in hopes a change will spark a better second half and ensure the team is playing baseball in October.

“John Schneider will have some cache with players, having come up through the system with many of them,” says Davidi.

“But it’s different once you’re in the big office. He’ll have to manage that transition.”

Schneider has been with the organization since 2009, joining the major league coaching staff in 2019. He was named bench coach before the start of the 2022 season.

“Casey Candaele is popular and will help,” Davidi says of the new interim bench coach, adding he “adds a needed element of been-there, done-that.”

The Blue Jays will play their first game with Schneider as interim manager when they take on the Phillies at Rogers Centre on Wednesday night.