SAD NEWS: Toronto Blue Jays star player will undergo urgent surgery and will be out for the rest of the season
Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher Alek Manoah is set to undergo surgery on his UCL and miss the rest of the 2024 season, manager John Schneider told reporters Friday.
It remains to be seen if Manoah will have Tommy John surgery or an internal brace procedure. Either way, he will be done for the year after Dr. Keith Meister completes the operation on June 17.
The upcoming surgery is only the latest chapter in what has been a crushing past 15 months for Manoah, who was once one of the most promising young pitchers in the game.
Moanah finished eighth in AL Rookie of the Year voting in 2021, going 9-2 with a 3.22 ERA, 1.048 WHIP, 10.2 strikeouts per nine innings and a 2.9 WAR across 20 starts. He took another leap forward in 2022, making his first career All-Star appearance while placing third in AL Cy Young voting and 17th in AL MVP voting.
That season, Manoah went 16-7 with a 2.24 ERA, 0.992 WHIP, 8.2 strikeouts per nine innings and a 6.0 WAR.
From there, though, Manoah’s production fell off a cliff.
Manoah went 3-9 with a 5.87 ERA, 1.740 WHIP, 8.1 strikeouts per nine innings a -1.1 WAR in 2023. He made 19 starts in the big leagues before getting sent down to the minors, where he hardly saw any action and eventually opted for season-ending shoulder injections.
It took an extended Spring Training and a minor league rehab assignment to get Manoah up to speed again in 2024. And through it all, he still looked wildly inconsistent.
Between 2023 and 2024, Manoah went 0-3 with a 10.21 ERA in seven minor league starts.
When Manoah finally got called back up to the majors for his season debut on May 5, he gave up six earned runs in 4.0 innings against the Washington Nationals. He also allowed four earned and six total runs against the Detroit Tigers on May 24.
In the interim, though, Manoah posted back-to-back starts of 7.0 scoreless innings. He seemed to be on pace for a similar kind of outing against the Chicago White Sox on May 29, before he left in the second inning with his elbow injury.
Manoah went 1-2 with a 3.70 ERA, 1.027 WHIP, 9.6 strikeouts per nine innings and a -0.3 WAR this season. He was placed on the 15-day injured list on May 31.
While Manoah’s recovery timeline depends on which surgery he gets, the right-hander likely won’t be back in Toronto’s rotation until the 2025 All-Star break at the earliest.
The Blue Jays don’t currently have a fifth starter to fill in for Manoah in the short term, although Cuban rookie Yariel Rodríguez could be nearing the end of his own rehab assignment. Top prospect Ricky Tiedemann could be healthy again soon as well, giving Toronto another option to round out the rotation moving forward.
