MINNEAPOLIS – About 30 minutes before first pitch Sunday, Alek Manoah bounded up the dugout stairs at Target Field, made his way past the Twins’ mascot and headed for the outfield to prepare for a game with significant implications for the Toronto Blue Jays.
All of 18 games into his big-league career the 23-year-old has far less pro experience than most pitchers entrusted with games this meaningful, but at some point during the last four months, he made the leap from unproven rookie to trusted big-game starter. And so nothing about the task ahead of Manoah seemed out of place as he headed for left-centre field with airpods in and blue socks pulled up just below the knee.
By holding the Twins to just two runs over 5.2 innings of work Sunday afternoon, Manoah continued to show he’s capable of delivering results in big games on the way to a 5-2 win that earns the Blue Jays a series split in Minneapolis and adds intrigue to the final six games of the season.
Now 87-69, the Blue Jays are assured of gaining a full game in the standings on either the Yankees or the Red Sox, who play Sunday night in Boston. By night’s end, Toronto will trail one of their AL East rivals by just 1.0 game and the other by 2.0, setting up a memorable final week of the season that begins Tuesday when the Yankees visit Rogers Centre.
Manoah kept the Twins off-balance all afternoon, mixing in hard sliders and four-seam fastballs to induce plenty of weak contact. He struck out eight while allowing six hits and throwing 102 pitches, the hardest of which was clocked at 95 m.p.h. on the radar gun.
After Sunday, Manoah’s season ERA sits at 3.35 in 104.2 innings making him a legitimate Rookie of the Year candidate. More importantly, he’s a pitcher the Blue Jays can continue to rely on as the games take on added meaning. His next start will come against the Baltimore Orioles on the final weekend of the season, and following that, team decision makers would have zero hesitation about using him in a playoff series.
Offensively, the Blue Jays don’t look unstoppable anymore, but they’re scoring enough. They got started in the second inning when Danny Jansen followed bloop hits from Corey Dickerson and Santiago Espinal with a three-run home run.
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Three innings later, George Springer hit a solo home run – his second in as many games after struggling for much of September. Springer, who started at DH Sunday after playing consecutive games in centre field, also singled twice and walked on his way to his first three-hit game since August 4.
In the eighth inning, a Teoscar Hernandez RBI double provided the bullpen with a little added breathing room, but they didn’t end up needing it. Tim Mayza and Adam Cimber both pitched scoreless innings before Jordan Romano entered and recorded a four-out save.
With that, the Blue Jays finished up the road portion of a season that sometimes felt like one long road trip. Next up, a return home and a week that will either end in bitter disappointment or lead to a playoff berth.
