Opinion | Ailing Alek Manoah guts it out before Blue Jays rally to split doubleheader with Rays

Almost any pitcher who makes it to the major leagues has enough skill to find success when all his stuff is working. It’s how he performs when things don’t feel so great that can differentiate him from everyone else.

Sometimes it’s a specific pitch that isn’t spinning right, or a quadrant of a strike zone that somehow can’t be touched. Other times, it’s when their arm feels a little fatigued or sore. Every now and then, it’s something more extreme.

Alek Manoah proved again Tuesday that he is the Blue Jays’ big-game pitcher with one of the grittiest performances of his career. Battling through a stomach bug that kept him up for most of the previous night, the 24-year-old gave his team everything he had with 6 2/3 impressive innings against the Tampa Bay Rays.

Manoah didn’t earn the win because the Jays failed to pull ahead until after he left the game, but he was as responsible as anybody for the win. The Flordia product allowed just two runs on five hits while striking out five to help the Jays salvage a split in Tuesday’s doubleheader with a 7-2 victory in the nightcap.

“He has firmly cemented himself as one of the best pitchers in the league, or in the game,” Jays manager John Schneider said. “What he did tonight was more of the same … He was grinding today, everybody knows that, but just a great effort by him.”

The impressive pitching line came on a night when Manoah clearly wasn’t pitching at 100 per cent. According to Schneider, the second-year righty began experiencing flu-like symptoms around 2 a.m. and informed the club of his status early Tuesday morning.

A joint decision was made to scratch Manoah from his scheduled start in the first game of the doubleheader, a 4-2 loss to the Rays. The hope was that an extra six hours of rest would be enough for Manoah to give the Jays some innings. If he couldn’t go, a crucial matchup against a wild-card rival likely would have been left up to Yusei Kikuchi and perhaps a round of prayers.

But Manoah declared himself good to go before the end of Game 1. He went through his normal pre-game routine for the night affair and then went to work like he always does. By the time he walked off the mound to a standing ovation in the seventh inning, the book was about to be closed on his fourth consecutive start allowing two earned runs or fewer.

Predictably, Manoah’s stuff wasn’t quite as crisp as usual. According to the website Baseball Savant, the average velocity on his four-seam fastball was down 1.3 m.p.h. Similar dips were evident in his slider, sinker and changeup, yet it didn’t matter as he manoeuvered his way through the Rays lineup.

Manoah made only two mistakes that he was forced to pay for all night. In the third inning, Rays first baseman Ji-Man Choi hit a solo homer to right. In the seventh, he served up another solo shot, this time to Jonathan Aranda. They were the only two runs Manoah surrendered in a game in which he allowed just one other Ray to reach scoring position.

The Jays nearly let Manoah’s heroics go to waste. They didn’t score their first run until the sixth inning, when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a leadoff double and came in to score on an RBI grounder by Alejandro Kirk. That tied the game 1-1 but, a few minutes later, Manoah was still in position to be the hard-luck loser after the solo shot by Aranda.

A lack of offence has been an all-too-common storyline for the Jays these days, particularly at home. As first pointed out by Sportsnet statistician Scott Carson, the Jays began play on Tuesday night having averaged 2.9 runs per game over their previous 17 games at Rogers Centre. During that same span, which included a 7-10 record, they were batting .199 while being out homered 20-14.

It took awhile, but there were finally signs of life shortly after Manoah left the game. Whit Merrifield came through with a pinch-hit double down the third-base line in the seventh that put the Jays in front by one. In the next at-bat, George Springer lifted a high fly ball over the wall in left for his first homer since Aug. 28.

The Jays scored four runs in the seventh and two more in the eighth to take a commanding lead they would not relinquish. It was their second come-from-behind victory in as many nights.

“Everyone is going through it physically at this time of the year, but it was a total team effort,” Schneider said. “A lot of big at-bats, but I think what (Manoah) did on the mound was great, and it set the tone a little bit.”

If the Jays had lost both games of Tuesday’s doubleheader, they would have fallen 1 1/2 games back of the Rays. Instead, they maintained a half-game lead over a divisional rival while also temporarily pulling even with the Mariners for the top wild-card spot, pending the result of Seattle’s late-night game against the San Diego Padres.

The Jays have Manoah to thank for that, even though he technically didn’t come away with the win Tuesday. Two losses and a depleted bullpen would have been tough to bounce back from later in the week. That’s no longer a concern, thanks to the second-year ace.

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