TORONTO -- Four starts into the 2023 season, Alek Manoah is still searching for his '22 form.

Manoah was as consistent as they come last year, carrying the Blue Jays’ rotation through stretches of the regular season on his way to becoming a Cy Young contender and an obvious choice to start Toronto’s AL Wild Card Series. In all of his 31 starts, the right-hander pitched at least five innings, never allowing more than four earned runs.

But things have been different this year, and after the Blue Jays’ 8-1 loss to the Rays on Sunday afternoon, the hunt to retrieve last season’s brilliance continued for Manoah.

“I'm going to keep fighting my way out,” Manoah said after his outing. “That’s all I know how to do and that’s what this team needs from me.”

A collective gasp quieted Rogers Centre almost instantly in the series finale against Tampa Bay. Manoah’s opening pitch sailed up and in, clipping Yandy Díaz in the shoulder and sending him on a free trip to first base.

The next at-bat didn’t go any better: five pitches, four balls and another free pass. After a single and one more walk scored Tampa Bay’s first run, pitching coach Pete Walker jogged out of Toronto’s dugout to give his starter a word of advice. The first 15 pitches of Manoah’s outing weren’t what Walker was looking for.

“I know he feels like he’s a little behind right now as far as stuff,” Walker said before Sunday’s game. “So I want him just to pitch, and pitch with whatever he has that day as opposed to trying to throw harder, trying to make his spin better.”

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Meeting Manoah on the mound with the bases loaded, Walker urged the starter to trust his stuff and attack hitters in the zone. In his previous start against the Tigers, Manoah caught himself overthinking mechanics on the mound, searching for the biting slider and 94 mph sinker that earned him a third-place Cy Young finish in 2022. On Sunday, the velocity was back, but the command was not. Manoah walked four Rays hitters, pushing his season total to 13 free passes in four starts.

Even without complete control of his pitches, Manoah is still flashing top-of-rotation upside. The 25-year-old pitched seven scoreless innings against the Royals on April 5, and he showed spurts of dominance in his other three outings.

In the fifth frame on Sunday, Manoah sent Wander Franco packing with a dotted changeup at the bottom of the zone, marching around the mound in celebration of the strikeout. Four pitches later, he was out for the strikeout strut again.

But consistency and command have eluded the righty, and those are key to harnessing a nasty repertoire. After those two strikeouts to start the fifth, the Rays went on another rally, turning a walk, two hits and a Christian Bethancourt homer into four more runs. The Bethancourt bomb brought manager John Schneider out for a pitching change, ending Manoah’s start at 4 2/3 innings with seven earned runs on nine hits, four walks and five strikeouts.

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“In the first three pitches of the at-bat, you’ve got to get two strikes,” Schneider said. “And then I think [Manoah’s] stuff really plays. I think that’s where he was last year. Right now, not so much.”

Manoah prowled the mound after strikeouts 180 times last season, and he’s the same tenacious pitcher in 2023, as he’s shown periodically through his four starts. But when the Blue Jays’ skipper took the ball from his starter and Manoah began the slow walk back to the dugout, he was still on the hunt for his dominant form.

“You go through it, you learn from it, you get better,” Schneider said. “We have all the confidence in the world he’s going to do that. He's been big for us for a long time now, for a couple of years now, so it shouldn't be any different going forward.”