The Blue Jays’ 2016 season ended with disappointment tonight as the team lost 3-0 to the Indians, who will move on to the World Series after topping Toronto 4-1 in the American League Championship Series. While the offseason comes with plenty of uncertainty for Toronto — Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista, Michael Saunders and Brett Cecil are all free agents — Jays president Mark Shapiro tells Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi that manager John Gibbons will return to manage the team in 2017.
The 54-year-old Gibbons will be entering the fifth season of his second stint as the Blue Jays’ skipper and will look to guide the team to its fourth consecutive winning season under his watch. Since coming back to the Blue Jays prior to the 2013 season, Gibbons has compiled a 339-309 record — a successful run that has boosted his career record as a manager to 644-614. Each of the 1258 games that Gibbons has managed at the big league level has come in a Blue Jays uniform.
“There’s a level of consistency with him in approach that is unflappable and I think that translates into toughness,” Shapiro tells Davidi. “He’s the same guy and in a role like this, when people tend to go with the wind and get so impacted by the emotion that flies all around us, that stability, that strength and that toughness from a leader is a real asset.”
There’d been some thought that Gibbons was in a “postseason-or-bust” situation with the Blue Jays, and while it’s unclear if that was truly the case, Toronto’s fairly deep playoff run rendered that a moot point. Gibbons will be entering his 10th season at the helm of the Blue Jays, though it’s unclear whether Jays decision-makers will pursue an offseason extension as Gibbons enters the final year of his contract. That, however, may not be considered a pressing issue for the team with so many roster issues facing them this offseason.
Gibbons and Farrell are in similar ships. I think both the Jays and Sox would be better served with new managers.
I don’t know, I think they did a pretty good job this year.
Indians are really good. They never give up and Francona showed me that he is one of the best managers in the game today. He’s done an admirable job.
Quite frankly, I thought he was awful in the beginning, but he has the Indians firing on all cylinders.
Farrell hurt our team by having Wright go in as a pinch runner, not to mention our pitching coach is useless but idk if he chooses who the pitching coach is
Easy to win games as a mediocre manager when you have an excellent team.
Forget the manager, jays need new hitters!
Gibby impressed me in the post season. He made tough calls and most, if not all, were the correct ones. You can’t put the blame on him when the team scores just 8 runs in 4 games(5 of which came in 1 game). He’s earned his spot for next year and we’ll see what he does with a different lineup.
Full kudos to the Indians and more specifically to Andrew Miller and Francisco Lindor. They pitched a perfect series and while they got the important hits. Good luck in the World Series.
A good manager does not just tell his team to swing for the fences championship teams know how to bunt or ground out to move a runner up so until gibbons changes his mentality he will never win a championship
@Nate99
Your complaint makes no sense.
Are you complaining about the Jays’ inability to score runs?
The Jays are the top scoring team in the playoffs, tied at 35 runs with the Cubs. Both teams had a 10-run game. Even if we take away that 10-run game, Cleveland (the #2 AL offensive team) outscores the Jays by only the slim margin of 27-25 in eight games each.
Are you complaining about how the Jays score runs?
Of the Jays’ 35 runs, 18 were knocked in on homers, 17 by other means.
By contrast, Cleveland scored 27 runs, with 15 driven in on homers and 12 by other means.
Pérez homered to right (377 feet)
Kipnis homered to right center (406 feet)
Lindor homered to right (360 feet)
Chisenhall homered to right (354 feet), Ramírez and Guyer scored.
Crisp homered to left center (395 feet), Ramírez scored.
Lindor homered to right (413 feet), Kipnis scored.
Santana homered to left center (390 feet)
Napoli homered to center (428 feet)
Kipnis homered to right (421 feet)
Santana homered to right (413 feet)
Crisp homered to right (391 feet)
We can agree that the Jays had opportunity to score many more runs, but failed. However, your specific complaint goes against facts and so is without merit.
“We can agree that the Jays had opportunity to score many more runs, but failed” – so somehow, history trumps adapting to the circumstances and finding ways to manufacture runs?
Your own comment confirms Nate’s argument…it’s your own commentary that contradicts your argument. Btw – Nate is 100% correct. Francona outmanaged both Farrell and Gibbons by adapting throughout. His opponents did not, which is the primary reason that Francona’s players are still wearing cleats while the Sox and Jays are in FootJoys.
indians played well enough to win they were the better team.
gibby managed the bullpen well but he got nothing out of his hitters. if you’re hitting like .100 with runners in scoring position at some point the manager has to do something to change that. tell your guys to lay down a bunt or shorten your swing. you can’t just afford to ride out a slump heading into the post season. except for the 3 games against texas, they have been doing nothing offensively for over a month. he has a team that should actually be better than last years’. hitters are pretty much the same but the starting pitching was much better yet the team did worst this year. there are things that managers can do to generate runs and he didnt do any of it all year. it was either the jays hit 5 homers a game or they lose 3-1.
if your batters’ approach isnt getting it done, you and your coaches need to come up with something new like being more aggressive early in the count or shortening the swings in certain situations. in a 5 game series i’ve never seen so many hitters take standing strikeouts in my life.
I think you’re saying here that by offering up one simple piece of advice, Gibbons could have gotten his hitters to produce more. The Blue Jays were full of accomplished MLB hitters that probably know how to hit. “Shorten up your swing” is probably something that would do nothing. If they had more time to turn it around, they could have made a solid effort to help the hitters hit better for the ALCS, but you can’t expect there to be much the coaches or managers can do to enhance the individual ability of any single player in a 10-day period like the ALCS. They scored plenty of runs during the year and didn’t score enough in the ALCS. That’s nothing to do with Gibbons and everything to do with the hitters not hitting well enough. Nothing else.
I wouldn’t say he did much; he shuffled his lineup near the end, but apart from that, he managed conventionally. Showalter blew the WC game rather than Gibby winning it; and his hitters simply did what they do best against Texas. When he actually needed to manage against the Indians, he was overmatched. Just about anyone would have been against Francona, so I don’t mean that too critically.
I’d lean more towards letting him go along with the batting coach.
The Jays hitters as a whole from the regular season into the post season did not play situational baseball. Runners did not get advanced with outs. When the Jays could not hit home runs in bunches, they were not winning games. This was two years in a row that the manager and hitting coach did not implement a change that is easy enough to do.
No stolen bases. No hit and run. No bunts. No going the other way. No reduction in striketouts. No giving yourself up for the team. Jose Bautista is the poster child for why this team did not succeed.,
Do you realize what team you are complaining about? The Jays do none of the old school style offensive approach; they just grip it and rip it. A team’s personnel dictates the style of game they will play. Those style teams have a tough time in the later rounds of the playoffs because they are facing better pitching on a daily basis. Gibbons is just riding the horse he has drawn. Earl Weaver did the same thing with the Orioles where he sat back and waited for the three run homer. The difference is, Earl had the pitchers to sit back and wait, Gibby doesn’t.
just because you have power hitters doesnt mean you cant tell them to shorten their swing with 2 on, 2 outs and facing a 2 strike count while being down a run. rizzo hits for power and he knows to shorten his swing in situations like that. if the jays hitters cant figure that out then the manager needs to tell him to knockthat ish off. if you swing for the fences and you hit .300 then fine do whatever you want. but if you’re jose and hitting .100, maybe shorten up that stroke to help the team.
jays hitters are like 1 for 75 with a man in scoring position.
Also, they made tomlin, otero and manship look like clayton kershaw. There’s no excuse for that.
I could say some disapproving things about the Jays but I can’t really say a postseason loss should have sealed his fate. The Indians have an incredible bullpen and Francona used this masterfully to out manage Gibbons.
Also as stated in the post by Steve, the Jays have too much uncertainty in the near future. Removing your team’s skipper can just cause more potential issues.
I’m disappointed that Mike Mathaney of the Cardinals didn’t get a shot at this job.
Little thing, but it would be cool if mlbtr would link the manager page like you do the player page
baseball-reference.com/managers/gibbojo02.shtml