The Blue Jays are promoting right-handed pitching prospect Alek Manoah, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports. He’ll start Wednesday against the Yankees.
It was a quick rise up the ranks for Manoah, the 11th overall pick in the 2019 draft. The former West Virginia star was excellent in Low-A ball that year, though he was unable to build on that last season because of the lack of a minor league campaign. However, Manoah picked up where he left off this season prior to his first major league promotion. The 23-year-old has dominated in his Triple-A debut with 18 innings of seven-hit, one-run ball and 27 strikeouts against three walks.
As one would expect based on his professional production, Manoah is among the game’s highest-regarded prospects. Outlets such as The Athletic, Baseball America, MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus have all placed him in their top 100 lists of late, with MLB.com writing that the 6-foot-6, 260-pounder’s three-pitch repertoire – a fastball, slider and changeup – could pave the way for a solid career as a starter.
While it remains to be seen whether Manoah will be able to stick in the bigs this year, Toronto could use the boost in its rotation. Hyun Jin Ryu, Robbie Ray and Steven Matz have combined for good production across 26 outings, but the Jays have gotten little else from their starters in 2021.
Lets Go!!!
Let’s go Mountaineer’s !!! Let’s go Alek Manoah !!!
The Blue Jays will be the next dynasty starting in a few years! I’ve added up like 16 different sabermetrics and algorithms, and with the young hitting they have, combined with the pitching on the way, they could be like the late-1990s Yankee teams.
Do you post them anywhere ?
AAA hitters were extremely overmatched vs. Manoah in those 3 starts this season. I’m very excited to see how he performs in the bigs.
YES!
I expect he’ll do good Wednesday. The Yankees don’t generally fare well against pitchers they’ve not seen before.
I guess I’ll give you a scouting report then…. elite fastball and wipeout slider is his bread and butter, he could probably close with those two pitches alone, but he also has a developing changeup that’s steadily improving. His fastball sometimes has a two-seam action and his slider can be slurvey at times, but he’s mostly a three-pitch pitcher. Giant human being with a track record of durability and throwing innings, and faced adversity in college when he was struggling with his command (he was one of those late-rising “helium” guys in the 2019 Draft). Has good enough command to mesh together his pitches. If he puts it all together you can get a #2 starter, potentially an ace. Definitely a bright future for Alek.
I wish I was 14 again so I could do nothing but memorize this kind of stuff. I’m lucky these days if I remember who my own team’s 5th starter is
Online school in these times is both a blessing and a curse
Yeah, @Joe
That has been one of our things for awhile now. I swear…the damn Ray’s do it on purpose.
Looking at what some 14 year old (hat tip @14yobbf, good stuff) posted below, I’m looking forward to seeing him throw. I saw earlier that this was listed as a TBA. I like this a lot more.
Should be fun.
Probably be another good series between these clubs. Yanks running pretty hot right now. We’ll catch the sox this week.
This move clearly signals playoffs are of high importance this year. If im not mistaken the report on him draft time was he may be a high end reliever
This guy is a Lance Lynn clone.
Steve Nebraska: He could be a C.C. Sabathia clone, except Sabathia was drafted out of high school and Manoah out of college (WVU).
Can’t wait to watch him! Wish they waited for the Indians or Marlins series though. Don’t like the idea of making him face the Yankees lineup.
Gotta face them sometime.
& – honestly – right now might not be all the bad of a time. Our pitching (both starters & relievers) is carrying the load so far. All season, as soon as it looks like the bats are going to come around they completely disappear for a couple games.
Stanton out. Hicks out. Voit still doesn’t look right. A few guys still scuffling.
Our lineup hasn’t performed nearly to their expectations. Like I said, might be a good timing actually.
Then again…ya know at some point the bats are going to heat up.
He dominated the Yankees in spring training. Good to start him against a team he has memory of success against. They’re almost all good lineups in the big leagues.
But really the Jays just need somebody who can throw 6 innings, no matter how many runs he gives up. Manoah is here to hopefully save the bullpen from yet more damage from yet more bullpen days, run prevention is just a possible bonus.
this dude is LEET
After getting swept by the Rays they had to pull out all the stops! Those last few evenings today and yesterday were painful to watch with the Blue Jays’ overworked relievers walking better after batter.
Love it. Can’t wait to see him.
Jays organization has done a great job developing position players. The young pitching needs to start catching up. If guys like Manoah and Pearson turn out to be what they’re projected of being, Jays are going to be a nice position. Woods Richardson hopefully will be something as well… young pitchers need to start being productive. let’s go. We’ve waited enough.
Don’t count out Hatch either. Hopefully 2 or 3 those guys work out.
I really think having zero minor league play last year hurt guys like Manoah the most. He’s at the age where you want to call him up, but he’s also hasn’t even pitched 50 innings as a professional ball player yet.
Ya think?! Duh!
Doesn’t mean he didn’t learn anything last year, though.
I’m not saying he didn’t learn anything, but the amount of player development done at the Alternative site isn’t nearly as much, or close to the same as regular playing.
Guess that depends on the organization. Smart orgs are using the alt site to get ahead with development
Manoah call up is inevitable. Since spring training the Jays don’t have a functional rotation. Even in spring training Jon Morosi called Manoah starting for the Jays in 2021.
Let see how he does. Does he need to learn or can he just fire away? How long will it take? He has all the tools but so does Pearson and look at what happened to Pearson so far.
I think Manoah will do really well except for one issue. Mistake pitches. In the minors/college mistake pitches mostly are missed. In the Majors mistake pitches are home runs. He’ll have to learn the mental game and to eliminate mistakes.
Of course I have tickets for all three games in Cleveland and I’m going to miss him. Cusswords!
Pray for rain!!!!!
LOL!!!
Poor guy must be wondering what he did wrong to be sent from the Trenton Thunder to the Shamrocks. For those too young to know, the Shamrocks were one of the patsy teams that the Harlem Globetrotters showed off against in mock games. The Shamrocks’, or the ‘Generals’ didn’t really have a hometown so they were given phoney ones like DC for the Generals.
MLB has made the Shamrocks into a regular league team. They have been playing their ‘home’ games in Dunedin, in front of Red Sox fans as well as Yankees fans and Rays fans. Soon, the Shamrocks will be playing in front of more Yankee and Red Sox fans in Buffalo. Just like the Generals were supposed to be based in DC and the Shamrocks in Boston for the Globetrotters comedy act, in this comedy act the Shamrocks are supposed to be based in Canada, where no one really plays baseball and where the government won’t let you play baseball or go to a baseball game anyway. LOL!!!
They should take the silly bird off their uniforms and put the big three-leaf clover on the front of their uniforms. At least this kid will get to play in a real major league baseball park when he opens in Yankee Stadium, in front of baseball fans who are free to go to a ballgame. Meanwhile in Shamrockland, all the Shamrock fans will be locked up by their government in their basements. LOL!!!
All real baseball fans should cheer this kid on Wednesday. He has always dreamed of being a big league player but he ended up a Shamrock instead. Let’s #FreetheShamrocks and let them have a real home in the US,.. LOL!!!
You need a life bro.
I like the way this idiot Le Grande peppers his lame monologue with “LOL” every few words. Like a laugh track on a bad 80s sitcom or a rimshot during a hack stand-up routine he’s letting us know how funny he is. A shame that he’s nothing but lame. Well, lame and sad and not funny. A perfect triple threat!
#BringBacktheThunder
You know if you have to explain your ‘joke’ it’s not really funny right? Not sure if you think your being clever and witty with these stupid comments on the Jays but your missing on all marks. Just a total fail man. Really don’t know why you hate Canada so much…..we don’t really care about you. Oh yeah….the ‘LOL’ all the time is just stupid.
Your and you’re are not interchangeable. You screwed up on the latter twice in one post. Learn the difference before calling another person stupid.
Two question marks from Manoah is fastball location and a third pitch. We will find out if he can command both. With the current situation he had to be called up. Jays have a tough schedule until mid-June. Should be an interesting 3.5 weeks.
The next Logan Gilbert