Manoah feels he has 'a lot more to prove' in second season

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CLEARWATER BEACH, Fla. — A year ago at this time, after a lost minor league season in 2020, Alek Manoah was barely on the radar.

The 2019 11th-overall pick had thrown just 17 pro innings after being drafted, and very few around the Toronto Blue Jays were expecting the mountain-sized right-hander to have much of an impact on the big club in 2021.

But that all changed after a couple of dominant spring training performances convinced the Blue Jays to aggressively assign Manoah to Triple-A to start the season, even though he had never pitched above Low-A.

Three scintillating starts for Buffalo were all it took, and Manoah quickly became an important rotation piece at the big-league level in the blink of an eye.

Now, the question is, just how good can the 24-year-old be?

If the sample size of 20 starts from his rookie season is any indication, Manoah could be just scratching the surface after posting a 3.22 ERA and striking out 127 batters across his 111.2 innings.

He isn’t resting on his laurels, that’s for sure. Manoah is keeping the exact same make-the-team mindset that worked so well for him last spring.

“I feel like I’ve got a lot more to prove this year so the mindset’s going to stay the same,” Manoah said. “All gas, no brakes.”

Manoah’s quippy one-liners have become about as common as a hitter swinging through his slider, a pitch that featured an elite 37 per cent whiff rate last year.

While that bread-and-butter out-pitch held batters to a .146 average, it’s his quality sinker and four-seamer that allowed him to have immediate success in the majors.

But if Manoah takes another step, the development of his changeup — a pitch he used just 9.4 per cent of the time — could be the reason.

As a rookie,