At the age of 24, Alek Manoah already is one of the vocal leaders for the Blue Jays. After an outstanding year, Manoah is the perfect guy to start Friday's playoff opener against the visiting Seattle Mariners. (ByDavidSingh)
Turning in one of the best single-season pitching performances in franchise history may only be an opening act. Because Alek Manoah is built for playoff baseball.t’s the middle of a night in early September when a knock on the bedroom door wakes Susana Lluch. Still in bed when the door quietly opens, she is somewhat startled to see her son, Alek Manoah, standing there. “Mom, I’m not feeling well,” he says.
Manoah texted Blue Jays trainer Jose Ministral in the middle of the night and now calls the team to provide an update on his condition. He offers to make his scheduled start in Game 1 but the team decides against that and tells him there’s a slight chance he could toe the rubber in the night game, depending on how he feels.
“We don’t necessarily have a ton of vocal leaders on this team and he’s kind of filling that void for us.” Stripling, who the Blue Jays acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers in the summer of 2020, says he’s enjoyed watching Manoah flourish and compares him to former teammate Walker Buehler. The two go about their business in different ways — Manoah is more jovial, Stripling says, while Buehler can be more edgy — yet they share the same heightened self-confidence and appetite for the big stage.
I don’t need to do that because the Yankees are aware of who I am and how I pitched to them and that I can get them out and I don’t need to chirp or go above to prove that I belong here,“There’s a few who come up and are instantly like, ‘Yeah, I belong here. Not only can I get outs here, but I can also be elite. I can excel, and I’m gonna be confident about it. I’m going to be myself about it.’ And that’s Manoah — he’s never not been himself. He has never wavered in confidence.
“It’s been fun to watch him work,” says right-hander Kevin Gausman. “And he’s only going to get better — that’s the crazy thing — as good as he is now, he’s not even close in the grand scheme of things. He really has no idea what he’s doing right now if you think about it. I mean,Gausman, who signed with the Blue Jays this past off-season, says he’s continually impressed by conversations with Manoah.
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