Blue Jays takeaways: Alek Manoah arrives exactly as advertised

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This article was published 27/05/2021 (1632 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The view from Deep Left Field on the Blue Jays’ 2-0 win over the Yankees in Game 1 of Thursday’s doubleheader:

With just 35 minor-league innings under his belt, Alek Manoah had less professional experience than any Blue Jay since John Olerud when he made his major-league debut Thursday. Olerud came to the big leagues straight from college.

The 23-year-old Manoah hasn’t really been around long enough to say it was worth the wait, but he exceeded the already-high expectations set for him with an absolutely brilliant performance in The Bronx.

The six-foot-six right-hander threw six scoreless innings, allowing two hits, walking two and striking out seven in a masterful outing in which not a single Yankee made it as far as second base.

It didn’t begin well, though, as Manoah walked D.J. LeMahieu on four pitches to start his outing. In a daunting environment like Yankee Stadium, pitching in the bigs for the first time, things could have gone off the rails in a hurry, but the rookie took a second, checked in with shortstop Bo Bichette to confirm responsibility on a double-play grounder and then, as he said, “locked it in.”

Manoah followed the four-pitch walk by striking out Rougned Odor on three pitches. He then struck out Aaron Judge on a 97-mph fastball right down the middle that made the all-star slugger look completely overmatched. The previous pitch, a 96-mph fastball in on his hands, made Judge’s ankle buckle as he swung and missed.

Those were the first two of seven strikeouts for Manoah, who threw 88 pitches to get 18 outs. There were also six fly ball outs, four ground outs and a pop-up.

The standard for a “hard-hit” ball is one that comes off the bat at 95 miles per hour or harder. Manoah allowed only two of those — Judge’s fly out to centre in the 6th (100.7) and Gleyber Torres’s fly to centre that ended the first (97.5). In contrast, the Blue Jays had seven “hard-hit” balls.

In all, you couldn’t have asked for much more from the 2019 first-rounder, who became the first Jay to throw at least six shutout innings and strike out as many as seven in his first major-league sortie.

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It’s still unclear, though, whether his star will ever reach the heights that his mother Susana’s did. She squeezed out every drop of the emotional highs every Blue Jays fan felt while watching her son dominate the Yankees.

• Pickin’ and grinnin’: Manoah didn’t need all that much help from his defenders Thursday afternoon, but Rowdy Tellez came up with a couple of huge plays at first base late in the game on short-hop throws from Bichette and Marcus Semien.

Tellez had to reach far to his left to haul in Bichette’s wild throw in the sixth, ending the inning and preventing the Yankees from putting the tying run on base. And, with two out in the seventh, he dropped to a knee to haul in Semien’s poor throw, making a snow-cone catch to end the game.

• Memories: If a 2-0 Blue Jays win, with both runs scoring as a result of solo home runs, felt familiar, that’s because it also happened more than a decade ago when two greats — Roy Halladay and Mark Buehrle — squared off at Rogers Centre.

The Jays got home runs from Aaron Hill and Frank Thomas in that May 31, 2007 game — the only times the Jays reached base against Buehrle, who retired the other 24 batters he faced in a 91-pitch complete game. Halladay went seven innings, scattering six hits, and the game took just an hour and 50 minutes to play.

The 2021 version, despite being only a seven-inning affair, lasted two hours and 11 minutes.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness