As Santander returns from lengthy IL stint, Blue Jays DFA Manoah

TORONTO -- For weeks, Tuesday had been circled as the tipping point for Anthony Santander. Either he’d be activated or the Blue Jays would pull the parachute on a lost season.

Well, it happened, but not how anyone expected.

Less than an hour before the first pitch of a 4-1 loss to the Red Sox on Tuesday night, the Blue Jays finally announced Santander’s return, but the bottom line on that press release caught everyone by surprise. Alek Manoah has been designated for assignment.

This lands at such a strange juncture for the Blue Jays. With the Yankees’ walk-off win, the Blue Jays’ lead in the American League East has shrunk to one game over the Yankees (Toronto owns the tiebreaker). The theme of this past month has been “difficult conversations,” though. John Schneider has had them with both Eric Lauer and José Berríos, two starters shifted to the bullpen, and another one or two could be coming when it’s time to write out the postseason roster.

Santander, at the very least, has a shot. The Blue Jays have scored one or zero runs in five or their last six games, so Santander will surely get some at-bats to feel out his readiness for the postseason. In his rehab stint, the slugger did enough to pique the Blue Jays’ curiosity again, even if they’re trying to catch lightning in a bottle here.

“He looked like himself, then I think there will be another gear with that adrenaline stepping in and coming into the fold here,” said GM Ross Atkins.

The left shoulder inflammation that plagued Santander all summer -- first a subluxation and then a complicated recovery process -- is finally behind him. He’s still every bit of the player the Blue Jays handed a five-year, $92.5 million deal to this past offseason, but he opened by hitting .179 with a .577 OPS over his first 50 games and is a notoriously slow starter, so he’ll need to buck a few trends in a hurry if he’s going to help the 2025 Blue Jays.

“He’ll be in the lineup,” Schneider said. “Whether it’s starting, whether it’s pinch-hitting, whatever it may be. It’s a guy we trust and it’s a guy who, I think, has some things to prove a little bit here because he didn’t get off to the start he wanted to with the contract he signed. We trust him, man. He’s put a lot of work in to get back to this point.”

Manoah, on the other hand, had just completed his comeback from Tommy John surgery and had made seven starts with Triple-A Buffalo. While many of his peripheral numbers weren’t as encouraging as his 2.97 ERA with the Bisons, Manoah still had team control remaining and was widely expected to come into camp next spring competing for a spot at the back of the Blue Jays’ rotation.

“These are always tough decisions. This just came down to a roster crunch and us feeling like [this was] the best decision for us to hold depth and support this staff as we push forward into very important weeks,” Atkins said. “We chose others over him, obviously, so this was a very tough, very difficult decision. They always are.”

Yes, it’s been three years since Manoah’s incredible 2022 season that earned him a third-place finish in AL Cy Young Award voting, but he’s remained such a prominent figure in this organization, even while he’s been away from the club rehabbing. A fan favorite, Manoah once looked like a new-age workhorse, the big, brash starter capable of pitching 200 innings and letting every hitter know just how badly he’d beat them. Manoah’s persona, as much as his 2.24 ERA that season, is what made him instantly appealing to fans in Toronto and around the Majors.

Now, it looks like it’s all over for Manoah in Toronto.

It’s a new beginning for Santander, though, in a season spilling over with surprises none of us saw coming. Why can’t he be the next one?