Sport: Baseball
Born: February 14, 1980
Town: Lawrence Twp., New Jersey
John P. Schneider was born February 14, 1980 in Princeton and grew up in Lawrence Township, NJ. John starred in youth-league baseball and continued his rise in the sport as a slugging catcher for Lawrence High School. He stood 6’3” and tipped the scales at 200-plus pounds as a high schooler. John’s brothers, Kevin and Matt, were also talented athletes. Both went on to play college sports.
John attended the University of Delaware and started for the Fightin’ Blue Hens as a 20-year-old freshman. He played three years for head coaches Bob Hannah and Jim Sherman and was a consistent .300 hitter with decent power. Delaware finished first in the America East Conference in 2000 and 2001, and John was drafted that spring by the Detroit Tigers. He decided not to sign and had another good year, as the team finished second in the Colonial Athletic Association in 2002.
After the 2002 college season, the Blue Jays selected John I the 13th round of the draft and farmed him out to Auburn of the NY-Penn League. Over the next five years, John’s defense and knowledge of the game helped him rise to AAA, but for the most part he was overmatched at the plate. Back problems and multiple concussions did not help. Toronto management convinced Joh that his future was in coaching and he went right to work for the organization as a coach. In 2008, he was named manager of the Rookie-level Gulf Coast Blue Jays and embarked on a managing odyssey that produced three league championship in 11 seasons—culminating in a 2018 Eastern League Manager of the Year award with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.
Among the young players John managed were Noah Syndergaard, Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio, Aaron Sanchez, Lourdes Gurriel, Jon Berti, Yan Gomes, Rowdy Tellez, Tim Locastro, Lane Thomas and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. When Guerrero later competed in the MLB Home Run Derby, he picked John to pitch to him.
In 2019, John joined the Toronto coaching staff to work with the team’s catchers and he was named bench coach by manager Charlie Montoyo in 2022. On July 13th that season, the Jays fired Montoyo and named John interim manager. The club caught fire and played .600-plus baseball the rest of the way and made it to the Wild Card series. They fell to the Mariners, losing a 10–9 Game 2 heartbreaker.
The Jays rewarded John with a three-year contract after the postseason. In his first full season at the helm, he guided the club through a tricky division that began with an epic winning streak by Tampa Bay and end with the unexpected ascension of the Orioles to the AL East title.
All Toronto did was win. The Blue Jays finished 89-73 and snagged a Wild Card berth against the Twins. Unfortunately, Minnesota took two in a row, by scores of 3–1 and 2–0. Toronto’s bats went silent at the worst moment possible, with Bo Bichette the only hitter who stepped up in the short series.