Jansen, Schneider reflect on their long path with Blue Jays

TORONTO -- Ten years ago, Danny Jansen walked into the Blue Jays’ complex in Florida. He’d just been taken in the 16th round of the 2013 Draft, fresh out of high school in Wisconsin, and it was time to meet his first pro manager.

It was John Schneider.

After six seasons in the Minors with the Blue Jays as a catcher himself, Schneider, then 32, was managing the GCL Blue Jays. If getting drafted opened the door to a shot at the big leagues, the GCL Blue Jays were six inches inside that door, the first step for most players in the organization.

Jansen described himself as “super raw” back then. He’d never even called his own game, let alone worked through a professional lineup. The Blue Jays were building Jansen from the ground up, prospect development in its truest sense. A decade later, here he is, carrying an .855 OPS and 15 home runs in 72 games into the postseason under Schneider as interim manager, beginning with the AL Wild Card Series Game 1 Friday in Toronto at 4 p.m. ET.

What’s the biggest difference, then, between a teenage Jansen and the 27-year-old you watch each night?

“For one,” Schneider started, a grin growing, “he can reach second base from behind the plate.”

• Buy postseason tickets

That’s what 10 years can do. Schneider knows who Jansen is as a person, not just a player. Ask any player in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse about Schneider, who took over the job midseason, and they’ll say the same thing. It’s given Schneider a front-row seat to the entire careers of some players he now manages.

“He’s more of a leader. He’s more vocal,” Schneider said of Jansen. “He’s confident in the player he is, not what he could become. He’s always had great bat skills, he’s just more aggressive now on both sides of the ball. That transition finished in the big leagues. Even in 2019 when I was here, he was figuring some things out. I knew him as an 18-year-old and now he’s going to be a dad.”

On that same 2013 GCL team was a lefty drafted in the 12th round, Tim Mayza. A couple of years older than Jansen, Mayza remembers how uptight he felt in his pro debut, wanting to make a first impression on the Blue Jays. What he also remembers, though, is a calm, cool Schneider, making relaxed decisions even when a moment felt big.

Jansen and Mayza have spent 10 years with the Blue Jays organization, longer than any other player on this roster. Jordan Romano is a year behind, overlapping at so many stops along the way. As the spotlight grows, they’re realizing these relationships matter more than ever. There aren’t many pitchers and catchers -- and certainly aren’t many managers and players -- who take the field with a decade-long relationship.

“I count on [Jansen] just as much now as I did back then,” Mayza said. “I follow his lead behind the plate and what he calls. I trust him. That definitely goes back. We’ve both come up and grown together in terms of how we approach this game.”

The stakes are higher, Schneider realizes, but the language is the same.

“It’s been nice to have that with these guys,” Schneider said. “It is different in the big leagues, and in watching these guys develop into really good Major League players, I’ve had to evolve with them. The conversations that started at the complex and on those bus rides, they still happen today.”

Mayza remembers back in 2015 and '16, watching as the Blue Jays made their first postseason runs in 22 years. In '16, both he and Jansen were headed to the Arizona Fall League, watching on from afar as they tried to establish themselves.

“There was so much excitement surrounding the organization,” Mayza said. “I can’t remember if it was '15 or '16, but we had a watch party in the hotel. I remember us watching those postseason runs. You kind of got a sense for what it is, even if TV doesn’t do the noise justice. I remember the excitement that was up and down through the organization.”

Jansen has played at nearly every level with Mayza. Any postseason run is special, he knows, but doing it for an organization he joined 10 years ago is something different. Doing it with a few of the faces he saw when he walked into that old complex a decade ago only adds to that, setting up his own opportunity to write a postseason moment.

“Seeing that atmosphere and being a young kid at the time, we were watching those games and watching them with each other,” Jansen said. “It was like, ‘Man, one day that could be us.’”

Jansen pauses for a moment.

“And here we are.”