CHICAGO -- He’s back. Yes, already. 

Alek Manoah will start on Friday for the Blue Jays in Detroit, marking his return to the big leagues after being optioned all the way back to the Blue Jays’ complex nearly a month ago. This is earlier than many expected, but Manoah’s return has been a moving target all along. 

“We didn’t really put a timeframe on it,” said manager John Schneider. “We said from Day 1 that he’ll tell us when he’s ready with the work that he’s doing. Then, it’s putting the results aside and really focusing on the things he was down there working on. He’s a big part of our team both this year and going forward. If we feel like he’s ready to come back and contribute, we’re going to go ahead and pull the trigger.”

It’s been pulled.

This past month has been incredibly unique. Manoah went from one of baseball’s true aces in 2022, finishing third in AL Cy Young Award voting, to posting a 6.36 ERA over his first 13 starts in ‘23. Nobody had that square on their Bingo card.  

Manoah isn’t the first gifted young pitcher to have trouble sustaining his success, but the dropoff was extraordinary and the decision to send Manoah back to the complex – not just Triple-A – underscored the severity of the situation. 

In the early weeks of Manoah’s assignment to the complex, he threw side sessions and worked in the Blue Jays’ pitching lab. That lab is a high-tech corner of the Blue Jays recent renovations to their complex, built to give players every imaginable data point. It’s already churning out value with younger prospects as they develop pitches and velocity, but it got its own callup to the big leagues when Manoah arrived. 

Last week, though, Manoah’s comeback trail took a shocking turn. In his first game action in the FCL, facing hitters mostly 18-19 years old, Manoah allowed 11 runs on 10 hits over just 2 2/3 innings. Both Schneider and GM Ross Atkins preached patience, saying that they liked what they saw far more than the dreadful box score suggested, and moved him up to Double-A New Hampshire to start on Sunday.

Take two went far better. Manoah struck out 10 over five innings of one-run ball, seeming to grow more confident as his outing went on. That confidence is such a key piece to this, which showed in his ballooned walk rate earlier this year. Manoah himself admitted that he was “trying to be too perfect,” which doesn’t fit for a bulldog starter. 

“With everything he’s been working on mechanically with his strike-throwing, we’ve been saying all along that he has a pretty good checklist of things we wanted to see,” Schneider said. “A minor tweak mechanically and we like what we see comparing last year to now, opposed to the beginning of this year.”

The numbers matter for Manoah – both the advanced metrics and the box scores – but the eye test is so important for a pitcher like him, too. 

“He’s in the zone,” Schneider said. “His last pitch was 95 mph. This is a dude who can obviously help us.”

That context is part of this. The Blue Jays need a starter, period. 

Hyun Jin Ryu is working back from Tommy John surgery and threw three innings in his FCL debut Monday, which could put him on track to return within the month, but the Blue Jays were riding a four-man rotation without Manoah. Without a solid sixth starter to turn to, the Blue Jays immediately pivoted to bullpen games, stacking Trevor Richards and Bowden Francis. 

It worked, often well, but nothing about that solution was meant to be long-term. 

Friday in Detroit is as sensible a landing spot as any for Manoah, though, on the road and facing a Tigers team that ranks 28th in MLB with a .670 team OPS. There’s no “easy” in MLB, but he’s not exactly being asked to shut down the Braves’ lineup on a Friday night in front of a sold-out Toronto crowd. 

If this works, it’s the story of the season for the Blue Jays. Manoah has long been the one player who can turn Toronto’s fortunes if he rediscovers a form even close to his 2022 self. 

At 45-40, this is a Blue Jays team that simply needs a spark. This still needs to work, of course, but if it does, Manoah is the biggest, brightest, loudest spark you could ask for.