Alek Manoah‘s latest rehab start at triple-A Buffalo took an ugly turn in the fourth inning Saturday.
In what was Manoah’s fifth outing of the season with the Bisons, the Syracuse Mets pushed across five unearned runs in the frame after a pair of errors unloaded the bases on a single play.
With two outs, Mets third baseman Luis De Los Santos hit a ground ball to third before calamity ensued. Josh Kasevich overthrew the bag at first base, allowing a pair of runs to score, but the ball got away again coming back to the infield, and Syracuse scored a third runner on the play.
To make matters worse, rehabbing big-leaguer Jose Siri homered on the very next pitch.
Manoah came back out and worked a 1-2-3 fifth and got two outs in the sixth to end his afternoon.
His final line showed 5.2 innings of work on 90 pitches with six hits, seven runs — five of them unearned — two homers, one walk and five strikeouts.
Manoah leaned heavily on his slider throughout the game, generating 12 swings and misses with the 34 times he threw the pitch. He also mixed in a changeup, sinker and four-seam fastball, according to Baseball Savant. His sinker averaged 90.9 m.p.h., down from his season average.
An MLB all-star in 2022, Manoah was fairly efficient through his first three innings of the game, retiring nine of the first 11 hitters he faced, with the only damage coming on a solo home run from José Azocar.
The 27-year-old right-hander has now made eight rehab starts after pitching once each for the complex-level Blue Jays, single-A Dunedin and double-A New Hampshire before arriving in Buffalo. Manoah is continuing to work back from the UCL reconstruction surgery he underwent last season.
Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith reported on Aug. 22 that Manoah’s 30-day rehab window had been extended by the Blue Jays — one of three possible extensions the team can use. If Toronto were to use all three, it could potentially extend his rehab through Sept. 12.
