With the recent departure of Dwayne Murphy and Chad Mottola, I decided to compile a timeline of all the official coaches in Blue Jays franchise history because for some reason I consider that fun. My two main sources are the Blue Jays Media Guide and this page on BlueJays.com.
Note: a limit to this chart is that it does not indicate when a coach is hired or dismissed during a year, for example, the chart shows that Gary Denbo served in 2008, but he was actually fired halfway through the season.
Click here for the high resolution version of the chart for you to browse and print out as a poster for your room or something.
Points of interest:
- The longest-serving coaches in franchise history are John Sullivan (1982-1993), and Brian Butterfield / Bruce Walton (2002-2013).
- Butterfield and Walton have served under four managers: Carlos Tosca, John Gibbons, Cito Gaston, and John Farrell.
- Rick Langford is the only coach to have served on three separate stints, one season each time.
- The Blue Jays have never completely "cleaned house" in removing all their coaches at once. Every single year there has been at least one holdover.
- 1999 was a complete mess, both with the club and the records in the Media Guide and website. They list only four coaches on the team. Perhaps it's understandable: they fired manager Tim Johnson on March 17 and their third-base coach Sal Butera on April 1. They moved Terry Bevington, who was ticketed to manage in AAA, to take over Butera. Butera was going to manage AAA but then a day before the season he was replaced by Pat Kelly. A check of Toronto Star archives from that year reveal that Jim Lett and Gary Matthews continued as coaches even though the Blue Jays sources say they were not.
- Actually there might be more errors. Let me know if you find any.