NEW YORK — Midway through the 2013 season, the errant Toronto Blue Jays seemed to have found their way. A franchise-record tying 11-game win streak from June 11-23 had not only dug them out of an early hole, but had pushed them two games over .500. Only instead of taking off from there, they floundered, falling back under the break-even point for good on July 2, ending up 74-88 in a season of misery.
John Gibbons was the Blue Jays manager then and he was reminded of that this season as bench coach for the New York Mets, who fell to 24-35 on June 2 before reeling off 16 wins in 20 outings to get back over .500. This time, however, his team didn’t peter out the way the 2013 club did, finishing 89-73, clinching a wild-card spot and advancing to the National League Championship Series, which is tied 1-1 heading into Game 3 versus the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday night.
The difference between then and now?
“That’s a good question,” Gibbons said in the Mets dugout at Citi Field ahead of a light workout. “(Manager) Carlos Mendoza had a big part in that, staying steady. I don’t think the heat was on this team. In ’13, they crowned us champs after the trades with the Marlins and the Mets and I’m going to tell you, when there’s one team for one country, there’s some pressure in that. I don’t have any idea why once we got there, we fizzled again. I do know it’s hard work to get back to that.
“Coming into this season, we thought we had in shot at getting in — the wild card is a beautiful thing — but I don’t think our fans did really, after last year. That probably kept the heat off of us and allowed our guys to just play relaxed. And then our starting pitchers just took off. That’s the key to everything.”
Sean Manaea, Game 3 starter Luis Severino, Game 4 starter Jose Quintana and David Peterson, who’s been used out of the bullpen in the playoffs but could start Game 5 depending on usage the next two days and Kodai Senga’s status, certainly did some heavy lifting, giving the Mets a steady foundation from which to build.
That’s something the 2013 Blue Jays lacked and they didn’t have a player performing at an MVP-calibre level the way Francisco Lindor has throughout 2024. It’s all made Gibbons’ first year back in a big-league dugout since the Blue Jays allowed his contract to expire after the 2018 season all the more enjoyable.
“I didn’t think I’d be back,” said Gibbons. “I became a scout (with Atlanta after leaving Toronto) and I enjoyed that but it wasn’t my niche. I missed the field, but reality was kind of setting in, you know? The way the game’s going, it’s really a young man’s game but there are some guys out there, like Bruce Bochy and Dusty Baker, who managed to keep some of us older guys afloat, which is big for us guys. I also thought maybe my reputation is not what I thought it was, maybe something’s working against me, or maybe it’s just the way it’s supposed to be.
“I was also satisfied,” he continued. “I had my opportunity, which most guys never get, right. I’ve been pretty fortunate — twice — so I was good either way. But I did miss this. If you’ve been in the game as long as I have, in retirement, they always talk about you better have something to do. I was hoping. Realistically I didn’t think it was going to happen.”
In between managing the Blue Jays and coaching with the Mets, Gibbons did interview for managerial openings in Houston, Boston and Miami, and his work this season by Mendoza’s side may very well open up some doors for him again. Though they didn’t have a prior relationship, the two hit it off instantly, Gibbons using the feel he’s cultivated as a baseball lifer to help a rookie skip through a challenge-filled season.
“I think there are guys out there that are too overbearing, they offer up to too much,” Gibbons said of the bench coach role. “My approach is, if he asks me something, give my advice, and some things I remember as a manager that you don’t necessarily focus on but they’re important, I’ll keep him abreast of those so they don’t sneak up on us. Pinch-running, pinch-hitting, whatever we might do on defence, things like that. As far as pitching, sometimes you get too much outside crap and it ends up confusing you, or you end up doing something you didn’t want to do. That’s the worst thing.
“So I’m not going to jam anything out. The manager’s got to make the decisions. He’s getting paid for it. He’s got to answer for it.”
Gibbons knows all those pressures well from his two stints as Blue Jays manager and those experiences very much drive his approach to coaching now.
During his first go, taking over when then-GM J.P. Ricciardi fired Carlos Tosca on Aug. 8, 2004 and getting dismissed after a 35-39 start in 2008, he admits to feeling a need “to make it work because there may not be another one and you want to reward the people that give you that opportunity, that took a chance on you.”
Some of those feelings still existed when Alex Anthopoulos, having just swung blockbusters to land Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson from the Marlins and R.A. Dickey from the Mets, rehired him before the 2013 season. “I told Alex, ‘You may be killing yourself right here. You make all these big trades and then you bring me in?” he recalled.
But Gibbons was also more confident in himself at that point, too, and had a better sense of how to balance all the demands a manager faces.
“I’ve always been a relaxed guy but I internalize a lot when I get fired up,” he said. “Over time you realize there are so many variables that go into whether you win or lose and when you do it every day, you’ve got to learn to let things go, otherwise it’ll eat you alive. That’s with anything.”
He applied that mindset throughout those years with the Blue Jays, which included the 2015 AL East title that ended a two-decade post-season drought; a wild-card in 2016 when Mark Shapiro took over as president and CEO, Anthopoulos left as GM and Ross Atkins was hired as his replacement; and a split after the lost years of 2017-18, which led into a roster teardown.
Gibbons’ work with the Mets this year is demonstrative of his ability to work with players young and old and an interesting hindsight question for the Blue Jays is how he would have impacted the progressions of young players like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Bo Bichette, among others.
While he would have liked that opportunity, he understood how things would play out once Anthopoulos left and he remains grateful for the three seasons that followed.
“I’ve said it over and over, a new front office deserves their own manager, because there’s got to be something there,” said Gibbons. “Everybody doesn’t understand me. I’m definitely a team guy, company guy but I’m going to give you my opinion — I think a manager has that right to, because he’s calling the shots down there. He’s got to have a say in what’s going on. The way it all ended, there were some things going on that nobody liked, for either side. I wish maybe that hadn’t happened like that. Other than that, I’ve got zero complaints. They signed me to an extension. Really can’t complain about that. But every front office, every individual in the front office, they have their own personalities, have a way they like to do things. I see things my way. I worked under different GMs on teams and have done things totally different, but they deserve their guy. I’ve got no problem with that. It was time.”
Years later, Gibbons’ experiences are helping the Mets stay on track after nearly flying off the rails.