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Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons speaks with his coaching staff during batting practice on Oct. 16, 2016.Dan Hamilton

When John Gibbons was asked ahead of the game that ended the Blue Jays season what he knew about Cleveland starter Ryan Merritt, he paused for a beat and deadpanned, "He's left-handed."

It got a laugh in the room. The joke seemed less funny a day later.

This is the key to understanding Gibbons's managerial style – that he has no style.

By that point, someone such as John Farrell or Mike Scioscia would have committed to memory the colour scheme of Merritt's junior-high uniform. Gibbons leaves the details – and just about everything else – to his assistants. He's the Jean Chrétien of baseball.

Related: Blue Jays free agency: Who may or may not be back for 2017?

Immediately after the Jays were bounced from the playoffs, team president Mark Shapiro gave Gibbons the kiss of life. According to the big boss, the manager will be back to start the 2017 season.

It was an odd thing to say. This isn't a contract extension. Gibbons will simply return for the final year of his existing deal.

His team had just been among Major League Baseball's final four for the second consecutive year. And yet it had to be made clear that there were no plans to fire him.

Perhaps this had something to do not just with what had happened – a steamrolling by an inferior team – but who was being held up as the hero of the piece.

More so than any player, Cleveland manager Terry Francona was the focus of every post-game paean. The signature celebratory image was Francona in a paternal pose with Merritt, holding the 24-year-old's face in his hands. That's what people want to believe a coach looks and acts like. That he can move mediocre players to greatness through faith. It's not something you have ever associated with Gibbons.

Francona's also good at the fiddly bits of his job. Based on the head-to-head evidence, better than Gibbons. A coach can't hit for the hitters or pitch for the pitchers, but he can make small choices that turn games, especially at this time of year. In each one of Cleveland's wins, Francona made at least one of those, usually with unorthodox bullpen selections that unbalanced the Jays.

Cleveland came armed with an overarching game plan to defeat one of the best fastball-hitting lineups in baseball – refuse to throw them any fastballs.

Toronto had no such plan, or any countermeasures to that depressingly simple approach (aside from initially denying that it was happening). There were no wrinkles developed or out-of-the-box thinking. The Jays' plan was 'Be good,' which is satisfactory only so long as it works. When things got tight, Toronto was infected by let's-not-do-anything-crazy-here regular-season thinking.

Trailing 3-0 in the eighth inning of Game 5, Dioner Navarro led off against Cleveland's juju man, Andrew Miller. Navarro singled.

Navarro is slow. Maybe the slowest man on the field. And that's including the umpires. But he was left in to run. Ezequiel Carrera struck out. Kevin Pillar hit a ball into the hole at short.

Cleveland's Francisco Lindor made a fine effort to get to it, but if anyone with even average speed had been on first, there was no play to be made. Since it was Navarro chugging toward the base like a tugboat, there was a play. Two out.

Darwin Barney – sitting on a miserable .067 playoff batting average, a man who has not had an extra-base hit since August – was allowed to hit. He popped out. Inning over.

They're small things and arguable things, but when you are paid seven figures, you should get the small things right in October. The arguable things are easier to argue if they turn out.

It was deeply apparent which of the two managers did more of that this series.

Shapiro hired Francona in Cleveland. After the series was over, the Jays boss went to the visiting manager's office to congratulate him.

"He's a difference maker," Shapiro said. It's perhaps the most complimentary thing that can be said of any coach.

Shapiro said many nice things about Gibbons on Wednesday night. That was not one of them.

It may be an unfair comparison. Gibbons will never be the sort of manager that players lavish with praise. In many years of covering Gibbons's teams, I can't remember a single one of his charges spontaneously saying something admiring about his work. They'll do so if you ask, but you have to ask.

For the most part, they seem to like him because he leaves them alone. Possibly too alone.

Another hallmark of Gibbons's rooms is a cramped feel as the season goes on, like too many people are living in too close a proximity. They become irritable and occasionally paranoid places. This is what happens when baseball players – almost all of whom crave a guiding hand – are left to their own devices. They go feral.

Since Shapiro's arrival a year ago, Gibbons has existed on borrowed time. Had the Jays fallen out of it in September, he'd have been fired. Had they lost the wild card, he'd also have been fired. It wasn't until the sweep of Texas that he managed to haul himself to safety.

He's never had what the Franconas or Joe Maddons have – a veneer of authority and wisdom that serves as a sort of force field. When the players screw up, it's the players' fault. When they rise above themselves, a la Merritt, it's Francona's. That sort of manager can lose and still thrive on his reputation.

Gibbons has no reputation other than one for baseline competence. He has to personally wear every failure by his team, and gets little credit for its successes.

His reward for overcoming that disadvantage is to become Shapiro's human shield.

If Toronto gets cheap with its off-season free-agent dealings, things could get iffy fast. Once the losses pile up and the fans get surly, someone's got to go. Gibbons will be that guy.

So, really, the professional kiss of life is a precursor to the kiss of death. Nobody's recommitted to Gibbons. Instead, they've put him on notice.

You had to win to keep your job. Now we're going to make your job harder. Keep winning. Or else.

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