Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Manoah’s Recent Stretch Among Most Dominant in School History
April 23, 2019 11:34 AM | Baseball
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – So, where does Alek Manoah's recent three-game stretch against Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Kansas stack up in school history?
It very well could be the most dominant 26 innings ever pitched by a Mountaineer hurler.
In Manoah's last three games, all West Virginia wins, the junior righthander has struck out 41 batters, walked none and permitted only 10 hits in the shutout victories.
Extending back to his 7.1 inning performance against Oklahoma on March 29, the Miami resident has now thrown 31.1 straight scoreless innings with 43 strikeouts, 11 hits and just three walks.
He fanned 15 with only four hits against a Texas Tech lineup that possesses a .302 team batting average and a .471 slugging percentage in 38 games.
Oklahoma State, another free-swinging team with a Big 12-best 55 home runs, managed just three hits against Manoah in an 11-1 Mountaineer win.
And then last Saturday morning, Manoah posted his second straight complete-game shutout by blanking Kansas 1-0 in a tense pitcher's duel with Kansas' Ryan Cyr.
Manoah struck out 15 and worked out of a no-out, second-and-third jam in the top of the ninth. Manoah got the next Jayhawk batter on strikes, induced a ground ball for a force play at home and ended the frame with another routine ground out.
"That's three in a row super dominant like that," West Virginia coach Randy Mazey said. "I was a little bit worried about complacency after the Texas Tech one because they're highly ranked and he was so excited to pitch that day and was so good.
"That shows a lot about him that he could come back and do it again. Some guys can do it once but can't repeat it, but he's repeating it every time out now, which is a super credit to him," Mazey said.
Manoah's work Saturday morning boosted his season record to 6-2 with a 1.81 earned run average in 69.2 innings of work. And his 95 strikeouts equate to 12.3 Ks per nine innings, putting him in rare air among Mountaineer hurlers.
It's comparable to lefthander John Radosevich's 14.03 strikeouts-per-nine-inning average in 1965 when he fanned 120 batters in just 77 innings.
That year, the Los Angeles Dodgers fifth-round choice struck out a school-record 22 Waynesburg batters in 10 innings to open the season, and he also posted 17 strikeouts later in the season against West Liberty and 14 versus Davidson and Virginia Tech.
West Virginia's other dominant pitchers, including 1997 first-rounder Chris Enochs, were not swing-and-miss guys like Manoah and Radosevich.
Kenny Smith won 21 straight games during his two-year career at WVU before losing his only college decision against Clemson in the 1987 NCAA Regionals in Statesboro, Georgia, but Smith was a control pitcher who relied on his defense to get most of his outs.
His only double-digit strikeout game came in a seven-inning victory over Duquesne when he fanned 10.
Ryan Williams, a 13-game winner and a member of Dale Ramsburg's final NCAA Tournament in 1994, was another control guy who relied on moxie and knowledge to get hitters out. He did whiff 13 Rutgers batters in the opening round of the Atlantic 10 tournament – his only double-digit strikeout performance that season.
Enochs had a 22.1-inning consecutive scoreless streak in the middle of his junior season in 1997 that saw him end it as the Big East pitcher of the year and the No. 11 draft choice by the Oakland A's.
He tossed a seven-inning no-hitter against Villanova with 10 strikeouts and just missed a perfect game in the sixth inning when catcher Jason Frushour couldn't squeeze Enoch's third-strike pitch, resulting in the Wildcats' lone base runner. He followed that up a week later with a seven-hit, complete-game shutout against Pitt.
Enochs fanned 10 batters three times that year and his 86 strikeouts in 95 innings equated to 8.1 strikeouts per nine innings.
Lefthander Zac Cline was a 12-game winner in 2003 with 101 strikeouts and 10 complete games in 125.2 innings of work that season, equating to 7.2 Ks per nine innings. He whiffed a season-high 11 Boston College batters in a complete-game victory and one-hit Virginia Tech in a Big East tournament elimination game that season.
In 2014, lefthander Harrison Musgrave posted 25 straight shutout innings in wins against Liberty, Texas and Kansas - his nine-whiff, six-hit complete-game gem at Texas being one of the best pitching performances of his WVU career.
His other was an impressive 14-strikeout, one-walk, three-hit complete-game shutout of nationally ranked TCU later in the season. Three times during his junior season in 2014 when Musgrave was named Big 12 pitcher of the year and was drafted in the eighth round by the Colorado Rockies he fanned more than 10 in a game.
Most recently, righthander Michael Grove had a brief 22-inning stretch in 2017 when he struck out 30 and walked three with 12 hits in a dominant three-game span against Oklahoma State, Kansas and TCU.
But seven days after his TCU win, Grove suffered a season-ending injury against Kansas State and never pitched again for the Mountaineers. Despite not playing last season, Grove was selected in the second round of last year's draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers and is now considered one of the top prospects in LA's farm system.
As for Manoah, he has four more regular season starts remaining, including an eagerly anticipated matchup against TCU lefthanded pitcher Nick Lodolo at Monongalia County Ballpark on Friday, May 3.
The college baseball website Perfect Game.com has Manoah now rated the seventh-best college prospect in this year's draft class, one spot ahead of Lodolo.
"Those hitters in that other dugout, when they know Manoah is out there pitching, it gets them pretty excited when the next guy gets out there," Mazey said. "They're happy to see anybody other than Manoah."
The Manoah-Lodolo pairing a week from Friday could be the best pitching matchup involving West Virginia since first-rounders Enochs and Jason Grilli went at it in the opening game of the 1997 Big East tournament in Norwich, Connecticut. Enochs overcame a rough start to hold on for a 6-4 victory that afternoon against Grili, an eventual 15-year big leaguer.
In the meantime, WVU's ace will have another stiff challenge this Friday night at Texas. The Mountaineer Sports Network from Learfield IMG College will have live coverage on affiliates throughout the Mountain State.
It very well could be the most dominant 26 innings ever pitched by a Mountaineer hurler.
In Manoah's last three games, all West Virginia wins, the junior righthander has struck out 41 batters, walked none and permitted only 10 hits in the shutout victories.
Extending back to his 7.1 inning performance against Oklahoma on March 29, the Miami resident has now thrown 31.1 straight scoreless innings with 43 strikeouts, 11 hits and just three walks.
He fanned 15 with only four hits against a Texas Tech lineup that possesses a .302 team batting average and a .471 slugging percentage in 38 games.
Oklahoma State, another free-swinging team with a Big 12-best 55 home runs, managed just three hits against Manoah in an 11-1 Mountaineer win.
And then last Saturday morning, Manoah posted his second straight complete-game shutout by blanking Kansas 1-0 in a tense pitcher's duel with Kansas' Ryan Cyr.
Manoah struck out 15 and worked out of a no-out, second-and-third jam in the top of the ninth. Manoah got the next Jayhawk batter on strikes, induced a ground ball for a force play at home and ended the frame with another routine ground out.
"That's three in a row super dominant like that," West Virginia coach Randy Mazey said. "I was a little bit worried about complacency after the Texas Tech one because they're highly ranked and he was so excited to pitch that day and was so good.
"That shows a lot about him that he could come back and do it again. Some guys can do it once but can't repeat it, but he's repeating it every time out now, which is a super credit to him," Mazey said.
Manoah's work Saturday morning boosted his season record to 6-2 with a 1.81 earned run average in 69.2 innings of work. And his 95 strikeouts equate to 12.3 Ks per nine innings, putting him in rare air among Mountaineer hurlers.
It's comparable to lefthander John Radosevich's 14.03 strikeouts-per-nine-inning average in 1965 when he fanned 120 batters in just 77 innings.
That year, the Los Angeles Dodgers fifth-round choice struck out a school-record 22 Waynesburg batters in 10 innings to open the season, and he also posted 17 strikeouts later in the season against West Liberty and 14 versus Davidson and Virginia Tech.
West Virginia's other dominant pitchers, including 1997 first-rounder Chris Enochs, were not swing-and-miss guys like Manoah and Radosevich.
Kenny Smith won 21 straight games during his two-year career at WVU before losing his only college decision against Clemson in the 1987 NCAA Regionals in Statesboro, Georgia, but Smith was a control pitcher who relied on his defense to get most of his outs.
His only double-digit strikeout game came in a seven-inning victory over Duquesne when he fanned 10.
Ryan Williams, a 13-game winner and a member of Dale Ramsburg's final NCAA Tournament in 1994, was another control guy who relied on moxie and knowledge to get hitters out. He did whiff 13 Rutgers batters in the opening round of the Atlantic 10 tournament – his only double-digit strikeout performance that season.
Enochs had a 22.1-inning consecutive scoreless streak in the middle of his junior season in 1997 that saw him end it as the Big East pitcher of the year and the No. 11 draft choice by the Oakland A's. He tossed a seven-inning no-hitter against Villanova with 10 strikeouts and just missed a perfect game in the sixth inning when catcher Jason Frushour couldn't squeeze Enoch's third-strike pitch, resulting in the Wildcats' lone base runner. He followed that up a week later with a seven-hit, complete-game shutout against Pitt.
Enochs fanned 10 batters three times that year and his 86 strikeouts in 95 innings equated to 8.1 strikeouts per nine innings.
Lefthander Zac Cline was a 12-game winner in 2003 with 101 strikeouts and 10 complete games in 125.2 innings of work that season, equating to 7.2 Ks per nine innings. He whiffed a season-high 11 Boston College batters in a complete-game victory and one-hit Virginia Tech in a Big East tournament elimination game that season.
In 2014, lefthander Harrison Musgrave posted 25 straight shutout innings in wins against Liberty, Texas and Kansas - his nine-whiff, six-hit complete-game gem at Texas being one of the best pitching performances of his WVU career.
His other was an impressive 14-strikeout, one-walk, three-hit complete-game shutout of nationally ranked TCU later in the season. Three times during his junior season in 2014 when Musgrave was named Big 12 pitcher of the year and was drafted in the eighth round by the Colorado Rockies he fanned more than 10 in a game.
Most recently, righthander Michael Grove had a brief 22-inning stretch in 2017 when he struck out 30 and walked three with 12 hits in a dominant three-game span against Oklahoma State, Kansas and TCU.
But seven days after his TCU win, Grove suffered a season-ending injury against Kansas State and never pitched again for the Mountaineers. Despite not playing last season, Grove was selected in the second round of last year's draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers and is now considered one of the top prospects in LA's farm system.
As for Manoah, he has four more regular season starts remaining, including an eagerly anticipated matchup against TCU lefthanded pitcher Nick Lodolo at Monongalia County Ballpark on Friday, May 3.The college baseball website Perfect Game.com has Manoah now rated the seventh-best college prospect in this year's draft class, one spot ahead of Lodolo.
"Those hitters in that other dugout, when they know Manoah is out there pitching, it gets them pretty excited when the next guy gets out there," Mazey said. "They're happy to see anybody other than Manoah."
The Manoah-Lodolo pairing a week from Friday could be the best pitching matchup involving West Virginia since first-rounders Enochs and Jason Grilli went at it in the opening game of the 1997 Big East tournament in Norwich, Connecticut. Enochs overcame a rough start to hold on for a 6-4 victory that afternoon against Grili, an eventual 15-year big leaguer.
In the meantime, WVU's ace will have another stiff challenge this Friday night at Texas. The Mountaineer Sports Network from Learfield IMG College will have live coverage on affiliates throughout the Mountain State.
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