TORONTO -- The grander the stage and brighter the lights, the better Alek Manoah gets.
In the pitching matchup of the season Saturday afternoon at Rogers Centre, Manoah went blow for blow with Shohei Ohtani in front of a sold-out crowd after the Blue Jays’ honored the 30th anniversary of the 1992 World Series team, dome cracked open on the finest day you could ask for in downtown Toronto. Even in a 2-0 loss, the matchup still over-delivered.
Manoah gave the Blue Jays seven innings of one-run ball on 105 pitches, grinding early and soaring late. Ohtani, needing to be nearly perfect to top the Blue Jays’ young star, threw seven innings of shutout ball on 109 pitches. This was best on best, greatness looking greatness in the eye, and another assurance -- as if you needed more -- that Manoah is primed for the postseason.
“Every game is Game 7 of the World Series for me,” Manoah said. “It doesn’t matter if Ohtani is on the mound over there or Roger Clemens. It doesn’t matter. My job is to come out, compete, give the team my all and do everything I can to try and get us the win.”
Ohtani dazzled in every way, touching 99 mph eight different times and walking twice in his four plate appearances. With two on and none out in the sixth, Ohtani busted it up the first-base line with a sprint speed of 30.0 feet-per-second to beat out a double play, a speed Statcast qualifies as “elite.” Even the game’s most uniquely talented player had to tip his cap to Manoah, though.
“I enjoyed [facing him], but I would like to avoid it, if possible, because he’s a great pitcher,” Ohtani said through a club interpreter. “Less chance of getting good results at the plate. But I did enjoy going pitch-for-pitch with him.”
What makes Manoah’s performance special isn’t the stat line, though; it’s how he got there. He took the pregame ceremony as “motivation,” but there’s a sweet spot that takes some maturity and self-understanding to find.
“He’s always up for these big moments and these challenges,” said interim manager John Schneider. “The thing that’s important and the thing that’s impressive about him, being so young, is that a stage like this with the pregame ceremony and going against a guy like Shohei, he’s up for it but he’s not too up for it. I think that speaks volumes to him as a competitor, a professional and how much he’s grown.”
Manoah came out throwing with his velocity below what he’s shown in the past, which raised some warning flags early. Typically, the big man averages 94 mph on his fastball, but he wasn’t close to that in the first few innings, sitting closer to 91 mph. Manoah kept rolling, battling without his best stuff. His final pitch of the second inning, inducing a groundout to escape the frame, was a 90.8-mph fastball. That’s not his usual output, but the difference between good pitchers and great ones often comes down to how well they can make it work on days that aren’t their best.
“One, he’s got really good stuff. Two, he got stronger as the game went on,” Schneider said. “He started slow and his tempo was off. He had a little bit of trouble with the mound, as he usually does, but he dialed in. That was like an old-fashioned pitching battle. They were toe-to-toe there for seven, and he really got stronger as it went on. What allows him to go deep is his desire to win and his competitive nature. We just saw it in New York without his best stuff, but today was pretty good.”
By the sixth and seventh, Manoah was regularly hitting 95 mph, topping out at 96.2 mph. This deep into a season for a workhorse like Manoah, it’s encouraging to see him dig down to find that, even if it took few innings.
Of course, Manoah’s performance will be mostly forgotten a few days from now, because the offense did nothing to support him. Toronto’s offense scraped together just two hits, while being shut out in back-to-back games for the first time since May 6-7, 2019. Schneider pointed to Ohtani’s dominance today after yesterday’s letdown loss. The spotlight will now shift to Sunday, when the Blue Jays will need to avoid being swept by a team that has no business sweeping them.
More often than not, though, Manoah’s performances lead to wins. And by treating every game he pitches like Game 7 of the World Series, that moment won’t feel so daunting when it really comes.