Blue Jays abruptly fire manager Charlie Montoyo amid Phillies series
The Toronto Blue Jays stunned the baseball world on Wednesday morning when they announced that they were relieving manager Charlie Montoyo of his duties and promoting bench coach John Schneider in the interim.
Montoyo is the third MLB manager to be fired before this year’s All-Star break, following the Philadelphia Phillies axing Joe Girardi and the Los Angeles Angels parting ways with Joe Maddon, both in the first week of June.
Three fired managers from three different divisions, two in the American League, and one in the National League. On the surface, they have nothing in common.
Look closer, and you’ll see that the Phillies are the thread that links them together.
Girardi’s firing is the obvious one. His job security was in question even last fall, when president of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski, let slip that he didn’t even know about the manager’s club option for 2023, indicating he already had replacements in mind. Throughout the first seven weeks of the season, fans and media members called for his removal. That interim manager Rob Thomson immediately turned the team into winners only validated everyone’s belief that Girardi had never been the right man for the job.
The Angels fired Maddon four days after the Phillies sent Girardi packing. Their 12-game losing streak coincided with the Phillies’ nine-game win streak at the beginning of Thomson’s tenure, which began during the series opener between the two teams. The Phillies scored seven or more runs in each contest of their three-game sweep of the Angels and after an off-day for Anaheim on Monday, June 6, Maddon was gone by Tuesday.
Clearly, of the three, Montoyo’s firing is the most shocking. While the Phillies had gone 10-18 in May and the Angels were on that horrific losing streak when their personnel changes happened, the Blue Jays have a winning record. Even though they’re in fourth place in their division, every AL East team is over .500, and the Tampa Bay Rays, Boston Red Sox, and Jays currently hold the three AL wild cards.
That said, the timing is pretty wild. The Phillies have one more game in Toronto on Wednesday night and will depart, once again, leaving chaos in their wake.