Manaea's midgame reset pays off for A's

Pitchers often dream of being able to hit some sort of reset button during a rough outing. Sean Manaea was actually able to do it.

Making his second Cactus League start in Thursday’s 4-2 A’s win over the Padres in Peoria, Ariz., Manaea struggled with command early and was pulled at 35 pitches, after walking in a run with just two outs in the first inning. Getting a breather in the dugout, the left-hander collected himself, re-entered the game to begin the bottom of the second and proceeded to retire the next nine batters he faced to end his outing.

“I was a little nervous before the game and I let it carry over,” Manaea said. “After the first, I came back into the dugout and was like, ‘Let’s just throw the ball.’ That helped settle things down for me and not make things too complicated. Having that reset button was nice.”

In a normal Spring Training, Manaea would have had to exit the game with a sour taste in his mouth and head to the A’s bullpen for a throwing session to complete his scheduled workload for the day. Instead, the A’s took advantage of one of the new spring rules for 2021, which allows teams to pull a pitcher from an inning that is going too long and have him return later in the same game.

Finishing with a perfect final three innings, Manaea ended up throwing 72 pitches and allowed two runs on two hits and two walks across 3 2/3 innings. He struck out five, with three of those punchouts coming after he returned to the game.

“[He was] just a little spotty with his command in the first,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “He was uncharacteristically pulling some balls in the dirt, and then the next three innings were fantastic.

“Especially towards the end of spring, sometimes you get a guy that throws too many pitches in the first inning, and you need him to go four to build his pitch count as you’re getting closer to the regular season. That was a good rule to institute.”

Manaea even showed off his defensive prowess with a smooth snag on a hard comebacker by Vic Caratini in the fourth. In the ongoing battle between A’s pitchers to see which one can come up with the coolest play on the mound, Manaea said he is now in the lead after that grab.

“I don’t know if any of the other pitchers can do it,” Manaea joked. “The ball found me. It was a couple inches from my face, which is kind of scary looking back on it. That was crazy.”

More importantly for the A’s, Manaea continued his fastball velocity renaissance. His heater reached as high as 95 mph against the Padres and sat around 92-94 mph for most of the day, similar to his Cactus League debut last week, which saw him top out at 94 mph.

Having learned how to pitch with a focus more on command in recent years, after seeing his velocity decrease -- his fastball averaged 90.4 mph last year, according to Statcast -- Manaea could be evolving into a new version of himself, one that can combine good control with the ability to throw the occasional heater past a hitter when necessary. It should only help him improve from last season, when he went 4-3 with a 4.50 ERA in 11 starts.

“What I like about Sean, and what I’m hearing from him, is he continually wants to get better,” Melvin said. “I’ve been impressed with a lot of the nuances that he’s come into camp trying to improve. We know we’re going to get solid performances. He’s got a few more pounds on him this year, which I think is good for him. Maybe that has something to do with the velocity increase, but I’m not sure. He’s just working to be a better pitcher.”