Could the Cubs Fix the Blue Jays' Broken Ace?

The recent news of Marcus Stroman opting out of his contract with the Cubs to become a free agent has opened up one rotation spot for 2024 that the Cubs did not expect to have. Justin Steele will be back, as will Kyle Hendricks and Jameson Taillon, but after those three, the Cubs figure to have two rotation spots open for any offseason acquisition (along with Drew Smyly, Jordan Wicks, and Javier Assad, among others) to fill. 

The Cubs figure to be in on guys like Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but after that, the crop of potential top-of-the-rotation free-agent pitchers gets thin quickly. Aaron Nola is already off the board, Blake Snell is probably the most polarizing two-time Cy Young Award winner ever, and Sonny Gray is 34 years old. 

Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported last week that the Blue Jays are “open to moving” Alek Manoah, and that has me wondering if the Cubs can find some rotation help elsewhere. After pitching to a 2.60 ERA in over 300 innings in his first two seasons in the majors, Manoah had a disastrous 2023, wherein he posted a 5.87 ERA and walked over 14 percent of the hitters he faced. 

Manoah was optioned to the minor leagues on two separate occasions, and according to Blue Jays General Manager Ross Atkins, he received an injection to combat shoulder soreness in October. After the 2022 season, Manoah was viewed by many as a potential regression candidate. His 2.24 ERA was exceptional, but his .244 BABIP, 3.31 xERA, and 3.35 FIP all suggested he wasn’t quite as good as that topline number suggested. 

Despite all of that, I don’t think anyone expected him to be so bad in 2023 that he would require a couple of trips to the minor leagues. Trying to find a singular reason that Manoah was so bad is a difficult task: everything was broken. According to FanGraphs, his Barrel percentage jumped from 5.4 percent in 2022 to 9.0 percent in 2023. He lost one mile per hour of velocity on his fastball, from averaging 93.9 miles per hour to 92.9. 

A drop in velocity is particularly damaging when you don’t have a high-velocity fastball to begin with, and is going to result in fewer swings and misses. Sure enough, his swinging strike percentage on fastballs dropped from 11.8 percent to 9.4 percent, per FanGraphs. Unfortunately, that was far from Manoah’s only issue in 2023. As mentioned above, his walk rate exploded, which is supported by the drop in pitches in the strike zone. He also lost some horizontal movement on his slider, which likely contributed to the decrease in his swings outside of the zone:

Cliffs Notes version: Manoah had worse stuff, threw fewer strikes, induced hitters to chase less often, and got hit harder when they did swing. Again, everything was broken. 

So which version of Manoah can we expect going forward, and what might it take for the Cubs to acquire him? If Manoah was truly hurt in 2023, it would certainly help explain the drop in velocity, the change in pitch movement, and the loss of control. Then again, if he was hurt that badly, he shouldn’t have been pitching at all. Clearly, he wasn’t helping the team a ton when he did. 

This all makes Manoah an interesting reclamation project. He’ll be just 26 years old by Opening Day, and is under team control through 2027. Given that he is just one year removed from receiving Cy Young votes, he isn’t going to cost nothing. The Blue Jays are competing now and would require some Major League-ready players. With the potential departure of Whit Merrifield and Matt Chapman, it certainly feels like Christopher Morel would fit better in Toronto than he currently does in Chicago. 

How much is too much for someone that could contend for a Cy Young Award, but could also end up in the Minor Leagues by the end of May? Is Morel, coming off a much better season but plainly with a lower ceiling than Manoah has, a reasonable cost? Tell us what you think of the possibility that the Cubs could be the ones to restore Manoah to ace status.