When former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Alek Manoah was first signed by the Los Angeles Angels, he was basically considered a lottery ticket. The Angels were taking some shots at a lot of players like Manoah, and he seemed like just another name on a long list.
But Manoah pitched two scoreless innings in his spring training debut for the Angels, so he’s drawing some interest. Sam Blum of The Athletic talked to Manoah about this, and about some of the impressions and assumptions of the Angels starter that Manoah either refuted or tried to explain as he tries to “change his narrative,” to use Blum’s words for this process.
Manoah was blunt about his downward trajectory from All-Star and Cy Young finalist to low-end pitching pickup, saying he’s been “fired twice,” in a two-month span. His career is now hanging by a thread, as Blum states, but Manoah believes is struggles are a blip rather than his “new normal.”
“I feel like some narratives can be created on their own,” he said at one point, then adding later in the interview, that “I know there are other perspectives and narratives that can be out there,”
Manoah’s take on the narrative also revolves around his statement that “I haven’t felt good in a few years.”
“I just think that’s the cycle of baseball, the pitcher said. “It’s very, ‘What have you done for me now?’ There are a lot of guys that had a really good year two years ago, but because they had a bad year last year, a lot of people are writing them off for the rest of their careers.For me. It was a matter of, I had a down year.”
Regardless of what anyone thinks about Manoah, the talent is there—or at least it was. He’s still just 28, and back in 2022 he had a 2.24 ERA over 196-⅔ innings in 2022. He also struck out 180 batters that year, and Manoah showed off the kind of swagger that marked him as a rising superstar in Toronto.
But he fell apart the following year, and the Blue Jays made the surprising move to send him to the Florida Complex League, along with a bevy of coaches who tried to fix him.
It didn’t work. Manoah lost his fastball, his control and finally his health., to use Blum's description. That led the pitcher to the Angels, who are trying to succeed with a bunch of players like Manoah.
“At the end of the day, it’s just baseball, right,” Manoah said. “I’ve been through a lot of tougher s— in life besides baseball.
That makes him sound an awful lot like former Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon, but Manoah is putting the work in so far. He says he hasn’t worked on some of the mental struggles that came with his physical decline, but he’s dropped a lot of weight, and he said he’s ready to “run through a brick wall” for the Angels.
New Angels pitching Mike Maddux believes in Manoah, however. He lauded the movement on Manoah’s stuff, and Maddux said his fastball hit 93.3 during that initial start against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
“He checks all the boxes of a guy you want on your team,” said Angels pitching coach Mike Maddux. “He got railroaded by some injuries here and there, but now he’s on the way back. If we can recapture the health, he’s going to be really good. His mental approach and his teammate approach is superb.”
“He knows what success looks like. He knows what it feels like. He knows what it tastes like. I think the sky’s the limit.”