TORONTO — Time and again, no matter what circumstance throws his way, Alek Manoah finds ways to meet the moment. Be it shutting down a division rival after one of their player beaks off like he did in his last time out, or taking the mound 17 hours after being drained by a stomach bug, the way he did Tuesday night, the big man takes the ball, locks in and shoves.
Even without his best stuff he did precisely that over 6.2 gutsy innings, stepping up after the Toronto Blue Jays lost the front end of a doubleheader largely due to some sloppy play in the field, while also keeping their rotation plans in these critical final weeks intact.
That Manoah handed the ball over down 2-1 after surrendering a go-ahead solo shot to Jonathan Aranda in the top of the seventh inning was beside the point. He’d more than left his team in position to pull out an important win, which they did with a bottom seven rally keyed by Whit Merrifield’s pinch-hit two-run double and George Springer’s two-run homer.
The end result, a 7-2 victory before a charged up Rogers Centre crowd of 25,103, secured a twin-bill split and put the Blue Jays (80-62) back up a half-game on the Rays (79-62) in the wild-card race.
A Tampa Bay sweep Tuesday would have left their hosts in a tough spot, with Drew Rasmussen set to start Wednesday against Ross Stripling and Shane McClanahan due to come off the injured list and start Thursday against Kevin Gausman.
Offence was already hard to come by as the Blue Jays had to scratch and claw to push across a pair in the opening 4-2 loss and had barely tied the game 1-1 in the sixth on Alejandro Kirk’s soft dribbler up the first-base line to bring home Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
But some well-played leverage machinations by interim manager John Schneider when the game hung in the balance in the seventh led to exhale swings for Merrifield, with his biggest moment since his deadline addition, and Springer, who went deep for the first time since Aug. 28.
Santiago Espinal, hitting for Cavan Biggio, started the rally with a four-pitch walk against lefty Colin Poche and after a Matt Chapman strikeout, Danny Jansen came in for Raimel Tapia and worked another base on balls. Merrifield then stepped in for Jackie Bradley Jr., and ripped Poche’s first pitch down the left-field line to erase a 2-1 lead.
The run of three lefties in four batters at the bottom of the Blue Jays lineup could have been a vulnerability for the Rays, but with Jason Adam likely to be their only leverage righty available, Schneider found a spot where he could lock in platoon advantage.
A couple of add-on runs in the eighth extended the lead and allowed the Blue Jays to use Zach Pop in the ninth after Jordan Romano recorded the final out of the eighth with Yandy Diaz up as the tying run in a 5-2 contest.
All of it started with Manoah, who informed trainer Jose Ministral at 2 a.m. that he wasn’t feeling right and led to his being pushed back from the first game, started instead by Julian Merryweather as an opener to Mitch White, who delivered six solid innings.
The Blue Jays weren’t certain Manoah would be able to handle the nightcap, which would have been detrimental not only to their plans for the day, but also for the coming weeks. His spot in the rotation also falls during upcoming series against the Baltimore Orioles this weekend, the Rays in St. Petersburg next week, the New York Yankees back at home and the Orioles back in Baltimore in the final series of the season, if needed.
But Manoah’s will made that concern mute.
“A lot of what makes Alek special is not even physical,” said Matt Buschmann, the Blue Jays’ bullpen coach and pitching development director. “It’s him, the mental capacity to handle failure, handle things at a high level and be competitive as he is. … It takes a special person to come in and just not be scared of major league spring training and he does what he does in ’21. He’s obviously very comfortable in the spotlight. I don’t know how you teach that. I would love to teach that. But it’s the outcome of his upbringing, the outcome of every aspect of his life up until and becoming a professional baseball player. If we could recreate that, it would be great. He’s a special person for that reason.”
