Breaking down what went right in Alek Manoah's bounce-back start vs. Tigers

DETROIT — Alek Manoah returned to the big-league mound for the first time in a little over a month Friday. He got ahead in counts, challenged hitters over the plate and put them away. As he pitched deeper into the game, some of his swagger returned, too.

By night’s end, he’d led the Blue Jays to a win and provided optimism for what he can offer during the season’s second half. Sounds simple, right? Yet a lot went into this 12-2 Blue Jays win. And because Manoah’s start was such a strong one — such a contrast to what he showed before his demotion to the Florida Complex League four weeks ago — it’s worth examining in detail.

“It’s been a little while,” Manoah said. “I’ve been waiting for this outing for a long time. It feels good. I’m excited about the strides I’ve made and I’m looking forward to continuing to build.”

A month ago, the problems were easy to identify. He wasn't throwing strikes, his pitches weren’t as lively and the resulting 6.36 ERA was nearly triple last year’s 2.24 mark. Yet even if the results weren’t there, it was hard for Manoah to come to terms with the demotion.

“That was a tough day for me,” he recalled. “I feel like I’ve done a ton to earn where I’ve gotten. To have that taken away from you, yeah, you’re going to hate a lot of things. But you can do two things. You can lay down and let everybody be right or you can continue to fight.”

Solutions were harder to pinpoint, but at their pitching lab in Dunedin, Fla., the Blue Jays started efforts to get Manoah back to where he’d been when he finished third in American League Cy Young voting last year.

“Dark secrets in the lab,” manager John Schneider joked. “It’s not a place where you just magically fix people, but it does give you an idea of where players were and where they are now.”

After a month in the minors, Manoah now says he’s in a better place mentally as well as physically.

“Definitely,” he said. “Sometimes you get caught up in looking at results. Caught up in a bad cycle. Wanting to do too much. Caring what everybody says. Caring about a lot of things that really don’t matter. So for me it’s just day by day. One pitch at a time. One workout at a time. Day one, day two, day three, day four. Just focus on the task at hand and let everything else fall into place.”

Before the game, Schneider shared what he’d be watching for as the game unfolded:

• “Strike throwing with all of his pitches,” something Manoah struggled badly with early in the 2023 season, as was especially apparent on May 15 when he threw more balls than strikes on his way to a season-high seven walks against the Yankees.

• “Delivery stuff,” including his “pace down the mound.” On this topic, the Blue Jays have been cagey — “Won’t get into specifics,” Schneider warned — but they want to get the 25-year-old’s mechanics back to where they were in 2022. One person suggested that means a more athletic, fluid delivery than the one Manoah displayed early this year.

• “His overall demeanour” on the mound. 

• While velocity “wouldn’t be the biggest part” of Schneider’s evaluation, the Blue Jays would obviously have an awareness of the radar-gun readings, too.

So, with that checklist in mind, how’d Manoah do? “Great,” said Schneider. But let’s go a little deeper:

• Strike throwing: Of the 94 pitches Manoah threw, a respectable 64 were strikes. For context, he threw more strikes 12 times last year but it still represents a season high for 2023. More impressively, 19 of his 23 first pitches were thrown for strikes, a career high. “First pitch strike percentage (had been) down,” Manoah said. “Good to see that tonight.”

• Delivery: Compared to where he was earlier in the season, Manoah looked comfortable and athletic. He caught a spike on the pitching rubber in the first inning, leading to a balk, and threw a few too many non-competitive misses. For the most part, though, he found a rhythm that worked. As he put it: “Just moving athletic.” And when he missed arm-side, he would often correct himself and find the plate again. “I was reminding myself to stay downhill and keep attacking down the slope,” Manoah said. “I felt those errors and made the adjustment.”

• Mound presence: Manoah pitched with some swagger — even a little too much at times. In the fourth inning, he thought he’d struck out Akil Baddoo and celebrated with an emphatic turn toward second base only to have home plate umpire Jeremy Riggs call a ball. Manoah tapped his chest as if to say ‘my bad’ then struck out Baddoo for real. Later, he applauded a Tigers honouree between his own warm-up pitches. While the Blue Jays hit, he chatted with his teammates on the dugout rail instead of keeping to himself like most starting pitchers. As Schneider put it afterwards, “when he’s good, he’s feeling it … I loved his demeanour.”

• Velocity: Manoah averaged 92.7 m.p.h. with his four-seam fastball, down a fraction from his yearly average, while topping out at 94.2. 

It’s perhaps no surprise that those elements added up to one of his best pitching lines of the year. He allowed just one run on five hits over the course of six innings, striking out eight. And granted, the Tigers are one of MLB’s worst offences. But it’s not like every pitcher they face limits them to one run. Manoah did well here

So did the Blue Jays’ offence, with 12 runs on 14 hits, including a George Springer two-run homer that capped off a six-run fourth inning and a three-run shot from Whit Merrifield, who has now homered three times in two days. Kevin Kiermaier also contributed a four-hit game while Matt Chapman walked three times.

As for the bullpen, Mitch White and Bowden Francis combined to close things out, which allows for further rest for the Blue Jays’ bullpen, including Erik Swanson, who was unavailable Thursday. If needed, the likes of Jordan Romano and Tim Mayza should be available in both of the Blue Jays’ remaining first-half games.

After an outing like this, it’s easy to dream, but even if Manoah’s starts don’t all look like this he can still help. Even five innings of competitive baseball every five days would impact the Blue Jays on multiple fronts. First, it would ease the pressure on the rest of the starting rotation, providing extra days of rest on occasion.

And second, it would allow the Blue Jays to deploy Trevor Richards as a traditional reliever again. Take the opener of Thursday’s double-header in Chicago, for instance. Richards’ two scoreless innings of relief were instrumental in Toronto’s extra-innings win but if he’s needed for a bullpen day, he probably wouldn’t even have been available.

Of course, all of that makes a bigger difference if Manoah can continue building on this outing. But after Friday, it’s clear those chances will continue coming at the big-league level. And it seems possible Manoah can still deliver on some of the promise that surrounded him before the struggles began.

“It’s a shot in the arm.” Schneider said. “It’s a reliable, really good major-league pitcher. He finished third in the Cy Young last year. We’re not asking him to be a world-beater, but he’s a big part of who we are.”