'Righting The Ship': What's Next For Blue Jays' Alek Manoah?

Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins discussed the next steps for Alek Manoah, who was sent down to the Florida Complex League on Tuesday.

The simple part was sending Alek Manoah down.

In a matter of months, the Blue Jays starter went from one of the best pitchers in baseball to statistically one of the worst. After Manoah lasted just one out on Monday against the Astros, Toronto decided to option him to the team's Florida complex. And now, the hard part begins: the rebuild.

Manoah traveled to the Jays' player development complex in Dunedin, Florida on Thursday, joining a handful of Blue Jays coaches, including pitching coordinator Cory Popham and special assistant Paul Quantrill. Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins declined to put a "concrete timeline" on Manoah's stay at the complex but said it would likely be "a couple of turns through our rotation," at minimum. 

The main advantage of sending Manoah to Florida, instead of Toronto's Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo, is the resources and coaches available at the complex, including Toronto's 'pitching lab'. The lab is a long hallway with a built-in mound, plate, and dozens of cameras from all angles to break down a pitcher's mechanics.

The facility should help Manoah and the team resolve any physical issues plaguing the righty. The Jays have already identified "an opportunity" to correct some issues in Manoah's release, Atkins said, and the lab should help implement changes and "sync up" the 25-year-old.

Subtle patterns developed in Manoah's delivery, in Atkins' view, that have impacted his fastball command. Atkins vaguely pointed to issues in Manoah’s delivery that began with his legs and impacted the consistency of his release point. Manoah leads baseball in walks right now and when batters get ahead of him this year, they're slashing .274/.539/.466

"I think getting him out of the most competitive environment in the world and allowing for him to create a new pattern, closer to the one he had in the previous years, is what needs to occur," Atkins said on Thursday.

However, if an obvious fix corrected Manoah's struggles, the Blue Jays probably would have caught it quickly and implemented the bandaid between starts. Pitching coach Pete Walker, Toronto's staff, and Manoah have worked through slight tinkers and tweaks during side sessions for the first two months of the 2023 season, but results haven't improved.

Manoah was one of baseball's slowest working starters last year, but Atkins said he doesn't believe the league's new pitch clock has impacted Manoah "to a major extent." Asked how much the young starter's struggles were mental vs physical, Atkins said he believes they started as issues with his delivery, that later impacted confidence. However, it's an impossible question to answer with certainty, Atkins added.

"It's such a difficult thing, you know," Atkins said. "It's such a difficult thing to truly know if we knew the answer to that, you know, we would not lose baseball games ever.

Whatever the cause of Manoah's struggles, the Blue Jays' plan is to catch it, fix it, and get him back to the big leagues as fast as possible. The team hopes to keep the starter's workload built up during his time in Dunedin, to plug him back into the MLB rotation whenever he's back in form. He may need a few rehab starts, Atkins said, but it could be as few as one.

“As soon as we're starting to see that new pattern, closer to the pattern that was so successful, that we can hit go," Atkins said.