MANCHESTER, N.H. — Nearly a month ago in John Schneider’s office, when the Toronto Blue Jays manager informed Alek Manoah of his demotion to the Florida Complex League, the big right-hander responded with a couple of quick questions and a vow. “What’s the plan? What do you guys need from me?” he recalled asking. “I’m going to attack this … stuff.”
Props to Manoah for subbing out the NSFW synonym at the end there, but either way, once he reported to the club’s facilities in Dunedin, Fla., that’s precisely what he did.
In the pitching lab, he saw the flaws in his delivery in a way he couldn’t while he was competing every fifth day in the majors, and perhaps more importantly, with the help of some visual cues, he could also start feeling them. He worked on patches to better drive down the mound that would help him to throw not just more strikes but also better ones.
As he did that, he also focused on getting his mind right, so bad situations wouldn’t spin out of control. His brain had been swimming. Progress was uneven, but there. The best advice he got was to be himself. He’d stopped doing that.
“It’s been a lot of ups and downs,” Manoah said outside the clubhouse of the double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats, for whom he threw five innings of one-run ball with 10 strikeouts in an important, steadying outing Sunday night. “Being able to figure everything out and understand that there are a lot of people that are rooting for me, having a great support system around me and also understanding there are a lot of people that like to kick me when I’m down.
“And that’s good because that means a lot of people want to see me down and that means they don’t want to see me come back up. And I’m ready to come back up. I’m ready to be a tiger. I’m ready to be a horse on that mound and I’m ready to help our team win, you know?” he continued. “That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned through this whole thing, is that you can kind of get down on yourself, you can think you’re not good, you can get emotional about it but nobody cares. Just got to go out there and compete and when your back’s against the wall, don’t lay down. Just keep fighting.”
That’s his focus and his plan is to keep it there, just as he did after that gruesome outing in the Florida Complex League last week when the Yankees blitzed him for 11 runs on 10 hits, two of them homers, and two walks in 2.2 innings. Similar to how that outing could have triggered panic, Sunday’s start could tempt the Blue Jays into declaring him fixed and returning him to the majors this weekend to plug the hole for a weekend starter a Detroit.
Another outing or two, perhaps at triple-A Buffalo, ahead of a post-all-star break return to the majors seems more aligned with the club’s sensibly deliberate approach so far.
Manoah insists he won’t stress over what comes next, choosing to focus on the work and the process, rather than the results. The Blue Jays “are not going to rush for the (return to the majors),” GM Ross Atkins said last week. “The priority is getting him back to a state that has him at the tops of rotations and not just competing.”
At Delta Dental Stadium against the Portland Sea Dogs, he seemed to take a substantive step toward that.
Working through a steady drizzle and a soggy mound, he commanded a fastball that sat 93 m.p.h. and was up to 95 m.p.h on the stadium scoreboard, shaking off an uneven first and sideways opening to the second to get progressively stronger.
Some of his infectious joy and swagger returned, too, as he retired nine straight batters from the second to the fifth inning, all but one via strikeout, despite taking a Marcelo Mayer comebacker off his inner left thigh, above the knee, in the third.
“Early on the mound was a little bit wet, baseball gods have kind of been testing me over the past few weeks, so understood that and said forget about everything and all the surroundings and just go out there and pitch,” said Manoah. “Felt like I was able to attack the zone as the game went on.
“Heater command was pretty good and the sliders were keeping them off the heater. I was feeling pretty good.”
As well he should, even though he did walk three and hit a batter in allowing one run.
Unseen in the pitching line is the way Manoah projected confidence and joy while playing alongside some former teammates with the Vancouver Canadians in 2019, when that team was still a short-season rookie ball club.
Breakout lefty Adam Kloffenstein was among them and “for about 30 minutes I took him under my wing in Vancouver and then I realized that wasn’t how that was going to go,” he quipped before turning serious. “He seems to be really clear-minded, which is tough when you’re going through something. He seems like he’s clear, he’s ready to go and he’s really looking forward to getting back with the team. He misses those guys.
“I never expected us to be teammates here for a couple of days. But hopefully, I can get up there and be teammates with him.”
Sunday may turn out to be an important point of progress toward that for Manoah, despite an inauspicious beginning.
Phillip Sikes lined Manoah’s second pitch, a fastball at 94 m.p.h., up the middle for a single and Nick Yorke followed with a rocket to left that Will Robertson tracked down for a long, loud out. Mayer, a top-10 MLB prospect, followed with a shallow fly ball to left and after a four-pitch walk to Nathan Hickey, he rallied to get Niko Kavadas swinging at a changeup.
He opened the second with a hit batter and after Matthew Lugo stole second, Manoah looked to have him picked off but didn’t get the call. Alex Binelas then ripped an RBI single, got caught stealing, and Manoah struck out the next two batters — one swinging and one looking — on fastballs to end the frame.
The mound and field needed tending to before he came back out for the third inning, which turned out to be an eventful one. After Yorke struck out, a Mayer comebacker struck him on the side, staggering him briefly before he recovered for the out and following a mound conference, he got Hickey swinging at a high fastball.
Manoah then struck out the side in the fourth and K’d two more around a walk and single in the fifth, finishing at 82 pitches, 47 strikes and a little hop off the mound once the fifth inning came to an end.
“I feel like that’s been the biggest change over the last three weeks, feeling confident in the stuff and even if it’s not good, throwing it like it is,” he said. “That’s something I’ve always done. The will to win and the competitiveness out there has always overmatched the stuff. I got a little caught up in the stuff and then let it get away from me.
“It was a good learning process and back to being able to compete and trust in the stuff and understanding that once the ball leaves my hand, I can’t control anything.”
The control is in how he prepares himself before he lets the ball go and right now Manoah is doing the work, living up to his words in Schneider’s office, locked in on the task at hand, methodically building his bridge back to the majors.