Manoah Continues Dominance, Set a New Career High in Strikeouts
Alek Manoah was back on the bump again on Wednesday night for the Toronto Blue Jays and once again, he was electric.
From the first pitch he threw to the final pitch, Manoah had really good command of his fastball and used it often. He did mix up his pitches which kept the Angels hitters off balance but they just simply could not keep up with his 4-seam fastball. Manoah generated a lot of swings and misses and weak contact on his 2-seamer by jamming batters inside. His slider was filthy as always and was a pitch that the Angels had a hard time picking up when he did throw it.
After two scoreless frames to begin the evening, Manoah hung a slider out over the middle of the plate, and Shohei Ohtani took it for a ride, notching his league-leading 38th home run. The two-run shot tied the game up in the bottom of the third but Manoah bounced back and struck out the side in the 4th.
In the top of the 5th, the Blue Jays offense gave Manoah the lead back and a sizeable one at that. After a Santiago Espinal RBI single to take a 3-2 lead, Teoscar Hernández blasted a grand slam to left field to extend the lead to 7-2.
Despite his pitch count creeping closer to 100 for the night, Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo allowed Manoah to go back out for the 7th inning. He retired the first two batters fairly quickly but then walked the next two and was removed from the game as Tayler Saucedo came in to clean things up.
The Blue Jays would go on to add three more runs in the final two frames to put the game away, 10-2, and hand Manoah his 5th win on the season. For the night, Manoah struck out a career-high 11 batters, walked one, and gave up two runs on five hits. His ERA for the season now sits at 2.59.
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