TORONTO — John Gibbons knows how it feels to sit in John Schneider’s chair. He has been burned by and tested the limits of its recline feature, left it and come home to it again.

In town Monday as the Mets’ bench coach, Gibbons looked just as comfortable in the visitors’ dugout at Rogers Centre, that same wry smile spread across his face with a dozen microphones pointed at him. Gibbons is beloved in Toronto, such a rarity for a former manager, but it wasn’t always this way.

Gibbons is quick to joke that, in his first stint leading the Blue Jays, he was viewed as the “right-hand man” of the GM and his longtime friend, JP Ricciardi. He was dismissed midway through the 2008 season and didn’t exactly leave town a hero, but when Gibbons returned in ‘13 and soon led the Blue Jays to those incredible postseason runs of ‘15 and ‘16, everything changed. A folk hero named Gibby was born.

Schneider is still climbing that hill. After Monday’s 3-2 loss to the Mets, he owns a managerial record of 203-178. He has taken the Blue Jays to the playoffs twice, but the only memories left of those are heartbreak. Schneider has taken criticism, which is written right into the job description, but Gibbons’ career in Toronto is a blueprint for how quickly that can change.

“I’m a big Schneids fan,” Gibbons said. “He used to come to Spring Training with us, throw BP, help with the catching and stuff like that. He’s a good baseball guy. I feel his pain, man, when he takes some heat. Everybody in this business does, and I’ve been in those spots. They got to the postseason. We would have died for that a few years back, right? It’s been in and out. He just needs to stay strong, stay positive and keep running the boys out there.”