DUNEDIN, Fla. – The cursive scrawled from elbow to wrist on Alek Manoah’s right forearm reads “The Birth of Samson,” part of a larger tattoo that features his surname in block letters beneath the script. For the Toronto Blue Jays ace right-hander, the ink isn’t just a piece of dig-me art, but rather a reminder of the book of Judges, in which Samson, gifted with super strength, is born to a man named Manoah and his previously barren wife after an angel’s visit.
“The story in the Bible is Samson’s the big guy in the family, he was chosen to look over the whole community,” Manoah explained on an idyllic Sunday morning at the Player Development Complex. “My parents aren’t freakishly big and all so they’ve always said I’m like the Samson of our family. That’s our family history. I take pride in that.”
A mountain of a man at six-foot-six, 285 pounds, Manoah also takes pride in playing a similar role for the Blue Jays, for whom he’s been essential since that memorable May 27, 2021 debut at Yankee Stadium.
A Cy Young finalist a year ago when he logged 196.2 innings across 31 starts while posting a 2.24 ERA and delivering 4.1 fWAR, the 25-year-old isn’t resting on his laurels. One club official noted how he’s been the guy turning the lights on at camp at 5:30 a.m., working so tenaciously that it seems like he’s on a mission to bag the top pitching prize this year.
Manoah shakes his head at the assertion, correcting it to “a mission to win a World Series,” although “if a Cy Young comes, cool.”
“Finishing top three last year was awesome and a great moment for me and my family,” he continued. “But the only reason I got there was because I was on a mission to win a World Series. That’s the same mindset. Go out there and do everything I can for this team.”
That determination was evident last October, when Manoah got the ball in Game 1 of the wild-card series against the Seattle Mariners and gave up four runs in 5.2 innings of a 4-0 loss. In the clubhouse afterward, he was so inconsolable that several teammates, Matt Chapman, the now-retired David Phelps and Jordan Romano among them, took turns trying to lift him up.
“I’m in a lot of crazy-stressful games and I kind of know the feeling,” said Romano. “You feel like you’ve let the whole team down and everyone’s blaming you. But that’s not the case. Young pitcher, he’s been amazing, the first sign of struggle, he’s probably feeling like that, too. I just wanted to make sure that he knows that everyone sees the work he puts in and it’s no one’s fault.”
Manoah said that message, and others like it, were comforting and demonstrative of the quality of his Blue Jays teammates. He also appreciated the way they took collective accountability for the series loss, saying “we’re all going to be better for it.”
None of that eased the sting and even four months later, he still feels “like I let my team down” in Game 1.
“I had one of my worst starts of the year and I put a lot of pride and a lot of work into every day,” he continued. “For it to come down to one game and me to have a bad game when my team needed me the most, that hit close to home.”
After some downtime to decompress and recover from his latest new workload high, Manoah began looking at areas where he could find some improvements.
Some were obvious. For the second straight season, he’d led the American League in hit batters during 2022. Further refinement of a changeup he used 11.2 per cent of the time and showed promise, even if it was taken deep four times, the same number as the slider he threw twice as often. More gains on a first-pitch strike percentage that he pushed up to 61.8 per cent. Hitting pitching fielder’s practice, or PFPs, and everything else in the margins even harder.
“Unless you go out and put up a zero ERA with 31 wins, there are areas to work on,” he said. “For me, it was how can we maximize all of our pitches, not just the ones that were already really good. Continue to add to those and continue to add to the focus of backing up bases, getting over, covering your bases, eliminating the free bases, some of the really small things that over a span of a major league season can add up and that get magnified in the playoffs.”
Attention to detail has been an early focal point at Blue Jays camp and it was on display again Sunday morning as the pitchers went through a creative array of PFPs. With two lines of pitchers on either side of the mound, one group pounced on comebackers up the first-base line while the other charged home to cover the plate and take a throw.
The pace was quick and energy high, with Manoah’s voice among the loudest of those hooting and hollering. “When we’re working on it in the season, that’s something I’m big on, something the staff is big on, just working with a purpose and getting the work done correctly,” said manager John Schneider. “Today was awesome. If you can get that effort every day, that’s a really good thing.”
Be it arriving at 5:30 a.m. or attacking the mundane with the enthusiasm, Manoah is bringing it for the Blue Jays, just as he did the past two seasons. Schneider sees someone embracing the way teammates gravitate towards him and the responsibilities tied to accepting more of a leadership role.
“I’m just being me,” said Manoah. “I enjoy playing baseball. I enjoy showing up here early. I think for the team, it kind of sets the tone that we don’t we don’t settle for anything. We have big goals this year and me being able to get in early and get my work done, be able to have energy in all the drills, I feel like that can create good energy for everybody, maybe push some other guys, things like that. A really good work environment makes it fun for everybody and allows everybody to get better.”
