John Schneider Might Want To Start Tracking His Steps

John Schneider, it's time to get out the step counter.

The Blue Jays have made a ridiculous number of pitching changes this year. Coming into the homestand, the Blue Jays have made 489 pitching changes this season and are on pace to challenge the 2019 franchise record of 591. After digging through play logs and adding up the numbers, I found that 161 of those 489 (32.9%) pitching changes have involved Schneider coming to the mound and taking the ball from his pitcher.

That's a lot of walking for Schneider.

There’s no exact way to measure this, as every ballpark is different, and Schneider doesn't take the same pace out to the mound every time, but the average adult male travels roughly 2.5 feet/step, and the distance to the pitcher's mound from the dugout is roughly 90-105 ft, so it should take him anywhere from 35-50 steps to get to the mound. Using rough math, if we take the average of 40 steps to get to the mound, then another 40 back to the dugout, then multiply that by the 161 times he’s made that trip, he’s walked roughly 12,880 steps just in pitching changes on the season to date. (Technically, DeMarlo Hale made a few of those pitching changes instead of Schneider, but let's not exclude those steps from the count. After all, Hale was taking those steps in Schneider's shoes, so to speak.)

For reference, those 12,880 steps are roughly 9.8 km. The Blue Jays website says the Rogers Centre has a diameter of 700 ft; multiply that by pi, and the circumference is just under 2,200 ft. Meaning Schneider has walked around Rogers Centre 14.6 times in pitching changes alone this year! At this rate, his next contract should probably include a footwear allowance.

This certainly wasn’t part of the plan coming into the season. The Blue Jays pitching staff has been tested to the limit so far in 2026. Coming into spring training, the team looked like it had too many pitchers for too few spots; injuries and poor play tested its pitching depth early. The same happened after the trade deadline. The Jays were tentatively set to go to a six-man rotation, but after injuries to Jameson Taillon and Trey Yesavage (and now Shane Bieber), the team found itself churning through pitchers yet again.

All in all, the Blue Jays have had 37 different players take the mound at some point this season; that's the most in the AL, and just two behind the Cubs for most in baseball (as of games on August 24). No team has made more appearances out of the bullpen than the Blue Jays, while they also rank among MLB’s top five in bullpen innings.

This isn’t just a story of John Schneider getting his steps in; it points to a bigger picture of how the Blue Jays have used their pitchers to get to this point in the season. Injuries have played their part, but the Blue Jays have also struggled to get their starters deep into games.

According to Baseball-Reference, here’s the leaderboard for average innings per start by team:

1. Seattle Mariners - 5.7
2. Cleveland Guardians - 5.5
3. Los Angeles Dodgers - 5.5
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27. Toronto Blue Jays - 4.7
28. San Diego Padres - 4.6
29. Washington Nationals - 4.4
30. Chicago White Sox - 4.3
* League Average is 5.1

The Blue Jays find themselves in the bottom five of the league, and that's despite Dylan Cease ranking second in the AL with 6.0 innings pitched per start.

When their starters give them length, the Blue Jays win less often than league average; when they don’t, the team has actually outperformed the league. The MLB average winning percentage when a starter throws six or more innings is .649, and the Blue Jays are 25-18 (.581) in those games this season. However, the Blue Jays have found a way to get more wins than average when their starters do not give them six innings in a start. MLB average is a .411 winning percentage, while the Blue Jays sit at 39-50 in those games with a .438 winning percentage.  

This raises a bigger question: Was this actually part of the Blue Jays' pitching strategy? Or was this something they were forced into?

The real answer is it’s likely a bit of both. Schneider has proven to be capable at managing bullpen games, but that doesn't mean bullpen games were ever the plan.

Coming into the season, the Blue Jays appeared to have plenty of pitching depth. The team wasn’t expecting to build its rotation out of bullpen games, or several four- or five-inning starts. Cody Ponce was supposed to make more than just one start; Trey Yesavage and Shane Bieber weren't expected to miss so much time; and the Jays certainly weren’t planning on trading Eric Lauer or Kevin Gausman coming into the year.

That’s what makes Schneider's usage practices so interesting. This isn’t a manager who decided five-and-dive is enough from his starters; it's a manager who is trying to figure out how he can get the most out of the pitchers he has.

That's worked surprisingly well so far. Blue Jays pitchers have collectively posted a 3.79 ERA on the season, and they’ve managed to outperform the league when their starter throws fewer than six innings.

But there is a difference between surviving heavy bullpen usage and building a sustainable pitching strategy around it.

Over the past decade, only a small handful of teams have been able to make the playoffs while ranking in MLB’s top five teams in batters faced by relievers. This is where the Blue Jays currently find themselves

• 2025 - Dodgers
• 2024 - Dodgers, Tigers
• 2023 - None
• 2022 - None
• 2021 - Rays
• 2020 - COVID Season*
• 2019 - Rays
• 2018 - Athletics
• 2017 - None
• 2016 - None

In other words, it's not impossible, but the odds are certainly stacked against them.

The Rays were among the first teams to use “the opener” and originally had success with it. The Dodgers are a recent example, but keep in mind the 2025 Dodgers struggled mightily with their bullpen; they used 40 different pitchers during the season, and 18 of them produced a negative bWAR. It wasn't until the postseason, when they moved some starters to the bullpen, that they found success. Historically, it's been hard to have success with a team that relies on its bullpen as much as the Blue Jays have in 2026.

With all this being said, the Blue Jays still find themselves with a chance at playoff contention. The team has 30 games left, and the schedule does soften up, as the Jays play several games against teams below .500 and games against teams competing directly with them for the AL Wild Card spot.

If the Jays want to get into the postseason, relying on John Schneider's legs can’t remain a part of the pitching plan. Eventually, the team will need more stability from its starting pitchers so it can turn its bullpen into a weapon instead of relying on it every night.

Until then, Schneider might want to keep that step counter running; his laps around the Rogers Centre aren’t necessarily over yet.