To his credit, he get them through the teardown/rebuild phase. But apparently he wasn't the one to take them further. I imagine all sorts of questionable decisions that he made will be brought up (an unwinnable challenge last night being the most recent, along with the amount of playing time given Raimel Tapia), because after all, he's the only manager who makes questionable decisions.

I also see he ends his Toronto tenure with a 236-236 record. Last night's win got him to .500!

"Hello, my name is Charlie Montoyo. You fired me from my job. Prepare to die."

He attending the funeral of his first base coach's daughter last week, so the timing seems poor. But the Jays likely had higher expectations than 46-42.

The 2021 Jays underperformed they Pythag by 8 wins, which is part of the reason they were the trendy up and coming young team to take down the traditional powers.

So yes, they're probably massive disappointments on that scale

3 is super good and should be recognized as such

John Schneider has been named interim manager. Will Tom Wopat be his bench coach?

Yes. #3 makes the case for a like button.

Not that I give Toronto managers much thought but this seems an odd move to me. The Jays are over 500, currently sitting in the last WC spot (by half a game). Disaappointing? OK, but firable?

Also what happened to the tradition of firing one of the coaches first? I'd think it's practically part of the "uniform manager's contract" that the hitting or pitching coach go first. Here it's the pitching coach -- the team's "problems" are all on that side -- Berrios, Kikuchi, Ryu (not that anybody has ever been able to keep him healthy). Or had they already fired the pitching coach?

As to Tapia's playing time ... what did the Jays FO think would happen after trading Grichuk's 545 PA for him? (And Teoscar misse a month) They've been equally terrible this year so the trade was a wash.

Gurriel since May 23: 381/435/544 with 1 K per 6 PA ... somebody got the BBTF memo on "put the ball in play dammit"
Teoscar since May 23: 314/363/533 with ... well let's not mention that

He attending the funeral of his first base coach's daughter last week, so the timing seems poor. But the Jays likely had higher expectations than 46-42.

The story is they wanted to fire him on the off-day, but because it was the funeral, they didn't do it.

Here it's the pitching coach

Pete Walker is given a LOT of leeway because he turned Robbie Ray into a Cy Young winner, plus some other reclamation projects he's worked with before.

Not that I give Toronto managers much thought but this seems an odd move to me. The Jays are over 500, currently sitting in the last WC spot (by half a game). Disaappointing? OK, but firable?

I don't know anything about Montoyo, but looking at his record and the team he has, it's hard for me to find a statistical reason to fire the guy, he takes over a sub .500 team, gets votes for manager of the year the last two season, puts up a good record in the toughest division in baseball. It just seems like a weird decision. I don't imagine he'll have any issues finding a job going forward (heck might be the Royals manager by the end of the week.

I don't have any insight into what Atkins and Shapiro think but if the chattering Internet masses of Blue Jays fans had their way he'd have already been gone.
Montoyo was too nice-nicey to make the players stop smiling in the dugout when things go poorly. Vladdy has gone back to hitting balls into the ground because he doesn't care about winning and just wants to joke with his buds. Now the players can break things and shout at each other to show their serious professionalism.

Their words, not mine. Well, sarcasm is mine.

I don't know anything about Montoyo, but looking at his record and the team he has, it's hard for me to find a statistical reason to fire the guy, he takes over a sub .500 team, gets votes for manager of the year the last two season, puts up a good record in the toughest division in baseball. It just seems like a weird decision. I don't imagine he'll have any issues finding a job going forward (heck might be the Royals manager by the end of the week.

The Blue Jays were seen as a likely division winner at the start of the year. ESPN's pre-season preview had them at 96-66 with 91% chance of the playoffs behind only the Dodgers on their "power rankings." Not that that is proof of anything but I think that's largely how they were perceived.

Instead they are on pace for 85 wins and have a 60% chance of making the playoffs. They are doing this with the slight but real advantage of every team (except the Yankees) going to Toronto shorthanded. I'm not saying it's fair but this is an underachieving team right now. I think there is also some perception issues here. Team OPS has dropped 40 points over last year and they are scoring over half a run a game less than last year so it becomes easy to look at guys and say "oh, he's underperforming." But of course this season is a deadball era all its own. Their team OPS is 2nd in the league (1st last year) and they've dropped all the way from 3rd to 4th in runs scored.

I've said it elsewhere. They remind me of the 2004 Red Sox at mid-season. A team with a hell of a lot of talent that hasn't managed to put it together yet. At some point I expect them to get crazy hot and they are a team I would not want any part of in a playoff series.

Instead they are on pace for 85 wins and have a 60% chance of making the playoffs. They are doing this with the slight but real advantage of every team (except the Yankees) going to Toronto shorthanded. I'm not saying it's fair but this is an underachieving team right now. I think there is also some perception issues here. Team OPS has dropped 40 points over last year and they are scoring over half a run a game less than last year so it becomes easy to look at guys and say "oh, he's underperforming." But of course this season is a deadball era all its own. Their team OPS is 2nd in the league (1st last year) and they've dropped all the way from 3rd to 4th in runs scored.

I assume management sees more to it all than this just because they extended him through 2023 at the beginning of April. Either the front office botched that, which would be surprising (if not unprecedented) after a few years already with the guy, or something has dramatically changed their perceptions of him.

They are doing this with the slight but real advantage of every team (except the Yankees) going to Toronto shorthanded.

Sigh. I'm not sure why people keep thinking this. There is no advantage for the Blue Jays.

If any of the Blue Jays non-American players were unvaccinated, they would not be allowed to play in the US for any of the Jays road games. They have 15 non-American players on their 40 man roster, including most of their important players (Vladdy, Teoscar, Espinal, Gurriel Jr., Kirk, Berrios, Romano). They would be missing 81 games a season if they weren't vaccinated.

The worst that any team has to worry about is an AL East team losing a player for just 10 games in the season.

It also meant that the Jays could not sign/trade for players because of their vaccination status. Robbie Ray, the Cy Young winner with the Blue Jays in 2021, could not re-sign with the Jays because he was not vaccinated.

The Jays have always played with a much more significant disadvantage during the pandemic than any team in MLB, and it isn't even close.

Eh? They did have a significant disadvantage in previous years, but by playing at home this year things now work in their favor. You can't pretend that stripping a few guys off every visiting roster doesn't have some sort of cumulative effect after 81 games. If Jose TripleA was actually better than Bob Noshots he'd have been on the roster.

And as far as the Jays having unvaccinated guys on the roster, it's not being lucky or some sort of coincidence; they simply can't. Everyone just says "It's just 3 or 6 or 10 games" or whatever, but 81 is impossible to work around. No other team in the majors has to weigh vaccination status as heavily as the Jays, so after three years they don't have any guys like this on their roster. Ray was a big loss, but he wasn't guaranteed to return even without this factor. Each year every team has to keep or let go of guys for their own set of reasons. You don't think other ALE teams were thinking about writing huge checks to guys that can't play half their games against a division rival? It was a factor for any well-run club.

Sigh. I'm not sure why people keep thinking this. There is no advantage for the Blue Jays.

If any of the Blue Jays non-American players were unvaccinated, they would not be allowed to play in the US for any of the Jays road games. They have 15 non-American players on their 40 man roster, including most of their important players (Vladdy, Teoscar, Espinal, Gurriel Jr., Kirk, Berrios, Romano). They would be missing 81 games a season if they weren't vaccinated.

Except that none of those guys are unvaccinated. The simple reality is that every team (again, except the Yankees) has gone to Toronto missing a player. Now teams miss players all the time for various reasons and it's hardly the only reason or close to the most important reason they've won but they do have an advantage.

Your point about Ray is a good one though. But it's a lot easier to deal with that in the off-season and if they had signed Ray it's likely they wouldn't have signed Gausmann.

They did have a significant disadvantage in previous years,

It's not obvious from the results. Their H/A records last year were about what you'd expect had they been playing in Skydome, rather than wherever the hell they did play.

It's obviously an advantage in theory this year (though it too isn't reflected in the results, particularly RS/RA). Yes, if they had a player who wasn't vaccinated, they would be penalized more severely, but the fact their non-American players would miss half the season if they weren't vaccinated sure made it more difficult for those guys to go the unvax route. Even Whit might have acquiesced under those conditions.