AL WILD CARD SERIES: MARINERS VS BLUE JAYS

October 8, 2022

John Schneider

Rogers Centre

Toronto Blue Jays

Postgame Press Conference

Seattle Mariners - 10, Toronto Blue Jays - 9

THE MODERATOR: We'll open it up for John Schneider.

Q. John, what was your message to your team just now?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: You know, postseason is great, and postseason sucks, because at some point if you're not the last team standing, you have to rip a Band-Aid off and your season is over.

I couldn't be more proud of those guys. My lasting message, if anything, was remember how they came together as a group over the last month or so, and I think it's the start of something great.

There's ups and downs, and we ultimately didn't achieve what we wanted to achieve at the start of the season. As hard as that is, 29 other teams feel the same way.

It's a special group. A group that's going to be together for a while. Right now it's just tough, but the guys are going to be better for it.

Q. Was there a turning point in this ball game for you, John, where the momentum shifted?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Yeah. What was it, 8-1? They chipped away, and it's a four-run lead in the 8th inning, and you feel good about that.

Reliving it and mapping it out, yeah, I think it was the play in the 8th inning that fell in in center probably changed the momentum, for sure. Everything else leading up to that plays a part in it too.

Sometimes the ball doesn't go your way, and that's the part of baseball that sucks. It was probably that Crawford hit in the 8th.

Q. Quickly, John, how is George doing?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: He's doing okay. He's going to be evaluated for a couple of different things. He said some nice things to his teammates just now, so we'll know more in the next couple of days.

Q. John, what do you want your players to take from this? What do you want younger guys to learn from an experience like this?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Getting to play these two games here at home, for one. Understanding and feeling the magnitude of what every pitch and every at-bat and every play means. They're going to be right there again.

This group is going to be right back in this situation again next year. If anything, I think it's the last month of how personalities, talent, people, and players came together, and I think if you start the season that way, that's when great things happen.

Q. Beginning from when Gausman left, starting with Mayza through the bullpen battle there at the end, how did you feel about how that sequenced out and how your pitchers handled that?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: I thought it sequenced out pretty well. Timmy Mayza is a tough guy to get underneath and hit the ball out of the ballpark. Especially, we like that with Santana right-handed as opposed to left-handed. Gausman was outstanding, I think.

Yeah, there's always going to be times where I could sit here for about six months and second-guess myself, but right now I don't.

You trust the guys that got you here. You trust your entire roster. Today we didn't get it done, and they beat us. That sucks right now, but again, the guys that did the job they did to get here, I'll never have any fear about putting them in again.

Q. John, can you run us through what happened on the blooper to center and where exactly did the contact between Bo and George occur? Did George take an elbow or an arm to the head? What was the point of contact?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Bo and George kind of both going for it. I haven't even had a chance to look at it on video yet, but I think it was Bo's elbow to George's shoulder or head area. I'm not quite sure. At that point you're still trying to navigate through the rest of the game.

I have to look at it to be more sure.

Q. Merrifield also left the game. I was wondering if you had an update on how he's doing?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: He's fine. We were just trying at that point in the game in the 6th inning, we're putting an outfielder in an outfield spot. Whit, not that he hasn't done it before, didn't feel like we were losing anything by putting Tap in. That's how we've played it all year. Today it didn't work out.

Q. You also pregame said that there was no bad blood with Robbie Ray, former Blue Jays teammate, but it seems like the fans were on him pretty hard. I was curious what you thought of the fans' reception for Robbie Ray.

JOHN SCHNEIDER: For one, the fans' reception to us the last few days was remarkable. We don't ever want to take that for granted because it hadn't been here for the last two years.

Their reaction to Robbie Ray, I think, is typical of a competitive fan base communicating with a guy that was here and that left. That's part of the game.

But, again, I know myself, and I think all the guys in the clubhouse, they have nothing but good things to say about Robbie. I think that's just part of the game.

Q. I know how devastating last season was for this team. Different context, but again, it's a tough loss. I know this club has talked about their resiliency a lot. How do the guys get over this over the offseason and yourself as well?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: It's going to take some time. Probably take a vacation or two. But it sucks when you're going through a process that ultimately is going to lead you to where you want to be. What was communicated with the guys after the game was great. Not from me, but from them speaking in front of their teammates.

They'll get past it. Right now it sucks, and it's going to suck for a while. If you can get -- we talked about getting incrementally better, this year as opposed to last year. It starts in the offseason, and it starts in spring training, and you keep trying to do those things.

But, right now it's -- what I hope they take from it is when kind of the dust settles and you look back at what they did, you can hold your head up and be proud. You learn from it because, like I said, that group is going to be right back in this situation next year.

Q. You talked about what you want the team to take from this. What do you kind of personally take from this experience, the playoffs, but also the last couple of months of being this team's manager?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: I would change the outcome of today and yesterday for sure, but I wouldn't change anything else in the last couple of months.

It's been an absolute pleasure to watch a team of individuals come together as a group and to be a part of that, I'm very thankful. Not just to the players, but to the entire coaching staff. It is a very tight-knit group and something that doesn't happen all the time in this sport.

For me, you learn from it. When you look up in a game like today and it seems like everything that could go wrong did go wrong in a very short period of time. You learn from it, and you say what could I do better the next time?

It's going to take a while to kind of wrap your head around it, I think, but I couldn't be more proud to be the leader of the men in that clubhouse for the last couple of months, including the last two games.

Q. What did your team show you today in the way that they came out in a must-win game and took control of it, and the fact that you built such a big lead, how much more excruciating is it to you the way it kind of unraveled?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: They showed what they've been showing throughout the course of the entire season, how they bounced back and how they have one another's back. There was no talk about losing today. There was talk about how to beat Robbie and the Seattle Mariners today.

So, it just showed me more of the same of the makeup and the character and the resiliency of those guys. To have the game where it was and to have it end the way it did, yeah, it's probably the worst possible outcome because of the belief and because of the chemistry that's in that group. It's a really tough thing to just turn it off.

So you don't want to say you wish you got blown out and make it a little easier. It would still suck if we lost 15-0 today. To have it unwind the way it did, and unfold the way it did, it's going to take a couple more weeks to let that simmer a little bit.

Q. John, just wondering, first of all, the Kirk call in the 8th inning, it looked like Tichenor missed that one. How much does that sit with you or resonate with you, bother you, if at all? Do you think about that?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Sometimes. Yeah, I mean, you want the players to decide the outcome of the game, right? That's everyone in baseball would say that. Umpires are human beings. They're not perfect.

You still like your chances with Kirky with two strikes. Muñoz is about as tough as they come. But calls are going to go one way or another for both sides over the course of a game or a season. Umpires are doing their best, and they're here in the postseason for a reason as well.

Q. More broadly, this group can basically be back next year with the exception of Stripling and Phelps and maybe a couple of others. It sounds like from what you're saying, this is a group you would like to see back basically as-is. Am I putting words in your mouth by saying that, or how do you view that?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: That's above my pay grade. Yeah, that's a tremendous group of people in there that have played together for a while, and with some of the new additions that have come in, it's a tough group to say goodbye to. I could put it that way.

You get close to people over the course of the season. Not just as players, but as people. That's a group that I'm pretty tight with.

Q. We were just speaking to fans outside, and they're understandably upset, angry. What's your message to them right now after you guys blew the 8-1 lead?

JOHN SCHNEIDER: Baseball sucks sometimes, and that this group will be back in the exact same spot very, very soon. Sometimes when you think you have an advantage, you don't win.

I understand the passion and the emotion of the fan base right now, and people aren't perfect, and sometimes you get outplayed. So, understand it, and if they weren't that way, they wouldn't be the kind of fans that they are.

My message going forward into the offseason is, as much as it sucks right now, it will make that group better.