Alek Manoah once looked like a franchise cornerstone for the Toronto Blue Jays. These days, he can't reliably get outs even at Triple-A.
Manoah is in the Angels organization now, but he couldn't stick at the major league level, landing at Triple-A Salt Lake instead.
His last four starts there have been rough enough that it's becoming fair to wonder if his ability to get hitters out simply isn't coming back.
The fall has been steep. Manoah posted a 2.24 ERA across 31 starts for Toronto in 2022, following a 3.22 ERA as a rookie, and earned an All-Star Game selection that season.
Then came 2023, and everything changed. His ERA ballooned to 5.87 across 19 starts, a collapse that caught the entire organization off guard.
He looked slightly better in 2024, managing a 3.70 ERA over just five starts, but injuries and ineffectiveness kept him out of the majors entirely in 2025.
The Angels gave him three outings earlier this year, and the results were brutal, a 9.82 ERA that did nothing to suggest a turnaround was coming.
Why a return to the majors looks unlikely now
At just 28 years old, Manoah technically has time on his side, the kind of age where careers can still be rebuilt if something clicks again.
But the decline here isn't a single bad season or an isolated slump. It's been persistent across multiple organizations and multiple years now, the kind of pattern that's much harder to reverse than a temporary rough patch.
It's a bit like watching a once-reliable engine slowly lose power, no single moment of failure, just a steady decline that never really stopped.
Does age alone give Manoah a real path back, or has whatever made him effective in 2022 disappeared for good at this point?
For Blue Jays fans, Manoah's story remains one of the more painful what-ifs from a roster that's produced plenty of good pitching depth in recent years.
Whether he ever pitches in the majors again is genuinely uncertain now, a stunning turn for a pitcher who looked like a true ace just a few seasons ago.
Do you think Alek Manoah ever makes it back to the majors?
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