No matter which way you slice it, Alek Manoah is an outlier.
From his imposing frame to his rapid ascent to the major leagues to his big personality, the Toronto Blue Jays starter tends to stand out.
His style of pitching does, too, though not always in the way you’d expect. Guys with his size and ferocity tend to be power pitchers, but last season Manoah was dead average when it came to fastball velocity (52nd percentile) and strikeout rate (50th percentile).
What’s made him so good so quickly has been his ability to generate soft contact. Between 2021 and 2022 Manoah produced a 2.60 ERA, the third-best number among 114 pitchers who pitched at least 200 innings pitched in that span. His FIP (3.51) — a metric based solely off strikeouts, walks and home runs — ranked 31st.
The secret sauce for Manoah is turning balls in play into outs. His BABIP allowed in 2021-22 (.245) was the fifth-lowest in the aforementioned sample despite the fact the Blue Jays defence as a whole conceded a BABIP of .290.
It’s a tough skill set to trust because there are things that happen beyond a pitcher’s control once the ball leaves the bat, but Manoah provided 308.1 innings of evidence that suggested he’s tough to square up.
The Statcast numbers supported that idea, too, as he ranked 80th percentile or better in barrel rate and 90th percentile or better in hard-hit rate in both seasons.
So far in 2023, the magic hasn’t been there. For the first time in his career, the contact quality against Manoah has been outstanding.
The big right-hander is struggling with other aspects of his game as well, but the most surprising part of his tough start has been the way opponents are hammering his offerings.
Although we’re looking at a small sample, Manoah has never had a month with a hard-hit rate like this (represented by the small red dot in the top right corner of the chart below):
As a result, his unimpressive ERA (5.13) is actually underselling his struggles. Manoah’s expected ERA sits at a bloated 6.99, more than twice last year’s number (3.31). Of the 99 pitchers who have faced at least 100 batters this season, that xERA ranks 94th.
There are a couple of possible reasons for this development, but two pitches that stand out as culprits. Manoah’s slider has traditionally been his best pitch and opponents have never slugged better than .324 against it in the past.
This year that number is at a whopping .684. Opponents’ xSLG is a far more reasonable .429, but that’s still high for the right-hander’s signature offering.
Hitters could be having an easier time with it as its movement hasn’t been as dynamic this season. Last year its horizontal break was 6.1 inches above average. This year it’s only 3.9 inches above average.
That’s still impressive, but that amount of movement decline could make a material difference. It’s notable that just 19 per cent of Manoah’s strikeouts this season have come via the slider compared to 35.6 per cent last season.
Manoah’s sinker appears to be the other pitch contributing to his contact-management issues. Not only did he experience a velocity dip on it early in the year, but commanding it has been a challenge this season.
In 2022 he did a good job of hugging the arm side edge with it…
… but this year it’s lived up and over the dish:
Hitters results against Manoah’s sinker in 2023 haven’t been devastating but that seems to be primarily a function of luck. They’re slugging just .357 against it, but an xSLG of .592 indicates that danger is lurking if the pitch remains where it does not belong.
Because Manoah is no strikeout artist, his route back to the type of effectiveness Blue Jays fans are used to most will likely come via an improved ability to induce soft contact.
Some of that could be as simple as his command with pitches like his sinker regressing to the mean or his velocity bouncing back as it did in his last start.
Fixing his seemingly diminished slider, on the other hand, might be a little more complicated.
It’s safe to assume he’ll be better than he’s been thus far. The magnitude of that improvement will go a long way toward determining how strong his 2023 is when it’s all said and done.
