Making Sense of the Alek Manoah Demotion
Alex Manoah getting pulled. New York Post (Getty Images)
TORONTO, ON — Alek Manoah once looked like a superstar. A readymade power pitcher with the type of electricity and charisma that Major League Baseball so desperately needs to succeed in order to survive. Selected with the 11th Overall Pick in the 2019 Draft, the 6’6” Right Hander was placed on the fast-track to the show after 2020 Minor League cancellation. It only took 18 innings and 27 strikeouts over 3 starts in AAA before the Blue Jays brass determined that Manoah was ready to contribute at the big league level. They were correct, as he struck out 10.2 batters per nine innings en route to a 8th place finish in American League Rookie of the Year voting. Manoah’s 2022 was an even further affirmation of his early call-up. Manoah was elite through 31 starts, posting a 2.24 ERA whilst walking a full batter less per 9 innings. A 3rd place American League Cy Young Finish and even higher expectations led to Manoah being named the Toronto Blue Jays Opening Day Starting Pitcher for 2023. It didn’t work out. After a 38 pitch, six-run outing in which he failed to get out of the first inning, Alek Manoah was optioned to the Florida Complex League in an effort to sort things out. On the surface, a demotion to Rookie Ball seems like it spells the end of a dramatic fall from grace for a budding young superstar. But this might just be the best thing for him at this current juncture.
Is this a surprise?
Not exactly. The bottom line numbers have been incredibly bad. Manoah currently leads the league in walks with 42, and he’s given up about 1.2 hits per inning so far. All told, that boils down to a 1.90 WHIP. On top of this, his ERA sits among the leagues worst at 6.36. Hitters are hitting .289 against him, which is in the same ballpark as Paul Goldschmidt, Randy Arozarena and Aaron Judge. He’s been utterly terrible and with Manoah being pre-arbitration, the move allows the Blue Jays to squeeze the most out of their club control. What should surprise you is how drastic of a step back this represents. Manoah finished 3rd in Cy Young Voting last season and entered 2023 with the 3rd best odds to win the award at +950 according to OddsShark.
Why the FCL?
The Florida Complex League is essentially the backfields. The rosters are filled with a bunch of 17-20 year olds who either aren’t ready to face seasoned competition, or aren’t mature enough to ride the bus with the veterans. Minor League Baseball refers to it as the “lowest rung on the Minor League ladder”. Yes, this seems like a pretty dramatic demotion for a guy who just completed a full season of Cy Young stuff. This is essentially an all-expenses-paid pitching vacation for Manoah. Toronto Blue Jays General Manager Ross Atkins has stated on multiple occasions that Manoah is a huge part of their future, and this bump in the road has not changed the organization's stance. Manoah will be coddled, treated like royalty, and surrounded by a plethora of technology and analytics to help pinpoint exactly what’s changed. The Major League, every fifth-day schedule Manoah was on with Toronto was not conducive for adjustments to be made. It’s clear through 13 starts that the adjustments that Manoah would need to make could not be executed on the fly. The key word here is time and resources. The Blue Jays staff in Florida has the ability to control the environment in which Alek Manoah is working through his troubles. Just about every pitcher is told to quit worrying about mechanics and adjustments once they get on the game mound, and Alek Manoah was not going to improve by trying to work through his issues in front of tens of thousands of people.
Has this ever happened before?
Yes. In fact, it happened to another Toronto Blue Jay named Roy Halladay. Ever heard of him? The 22-year-old Halladay (same age as rookie-year Manoah) entered his rookie season as a top-15 prospect and pitched to an ERA+ of 125 over about 150 innings. Halladay failed to improve in 2000, where he pitched to a horrible ERA of 10.64 and lost his spot in the Blue Jays rotation. He too, was optioned to the lower minors at the outset of the 2001 season. There, he worked with a pitching coach named Mel Queen, who identified his mechanical inefficiencies in a similarly low-pressure, controlled environment. The rest is history. Halladay went on to win the AL Cy Young two years later in 2003 and is regarded as one of the greatest arms of the modern era. Alek Manoah’s story is not over.
Roy Halladay pitching for Toronto. The Athletic (Getty Images)
What could have gone wrong?
A guy as young and as talented as Manoah doesn’t just suddenly lose his ability to get outs at an elite rate. And to be honest, I’m a bit surpised it took this long for Alek Manoah to hit a bump in the road. Manoah came into professional ball at a weird time, he had just finished up a 108-inning season for the West Virginia Mountaineers and was immediately sent the Low-A Vancouver after the draft. He was effective in his first taste of professional baseball before not seeing a game mound for about 18 months. The COVID-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of the 2020 Minor League Baseball season and in turn screwed up a lot of players’ momentum. Alek Manoah missed valuable development time in that 2020 season, and while we know he worked his tail off, the game mound is a different entity. It’s a lonely place, and how you handle failure is a massive part of pitching at the professional level. Manoah clearly showed enough signs of development when facilities re-opened, giving Toronto the confidence to have him bypass two levels of the minors in order to fast-track him to the Big League club. He threw 130 innings in 2021, and then nearly 200 innings in 2022 at age 24. That’s a huge jump for any young pitcher, especially one who’s developmental timeline was sped up due to the lack of distractions during the pandemic. Driveline Baseball founder Kyle Boddy highlighted this sentiment, pointing to a drop in velocity as a significant factor.
@DriveLineKyle
According to Baseball Savant, Manoah’s Fastball averaged 93.7mph in 2021 and 93.9mph in 2022, and was used just around 36% in both seasons. The velocity dropped a full tick in 2023 down to 92.7mph. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but as evidenced by this graph below, Manoah already works at a relatively ineffective fastball velocity and could not afford to lose anything further. We’d seen him sit 95-96 in high-leverage situations, but 96.5mph was actually his tip-top velocity during this season according to FanGraphs. The visual representation below is a few years outdated, as pitchers continue to throw harder than the last year.
Batting Average against Fastball Velocities from 2015-2017 (FanGraphs)
In reality, it’s impossible to diagnose Alek Manoah’s struggles without getting to know him and how his body moves. At six foot six inches, 285 lbs, Manoah has one of the most unique and powerful frames in the game of baseball. Those saying he is out of shape and needs to lose weight are simply incorrect, it has worked for him before and currently, there’s no reason to believe it won’t work for him again. I don’t know how long it will take and what it will look like when he comes back, but Alek Manoah being sent to the Florida Complex League is a vote of confidence in his future with the Toronto Blue Jays.
