Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Change In Mindset Has Opened The Door To The Future For Manoah
May 17, 2019 03:57 PM | Baseball
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Randy Mazey's trips to the mound to take out Alek Manoah are a lot like entering a cage to take away food from a feeding lion.Enter at your own peril! Mazey got that feeling once again in the fourth inning of last night's 10-1 victory over George Washington.
His star righthander was on a pitch count, which turned out to be just 56, and Mazey also wanted Manoah to get in some work on his changeup before his next start next Thursday in the Big 12 tournament.
All of this was agreed upon before the game, but Manoah still wasn't too thrilled to see his coach heading to the mound with two outs in the fourth inning and the Mountaineers comfortably ahead 8-1.
"He talked about a pitch count, but I didn't think it was going to be that low," Manoah laughed.
What seemed low to Manoah was actually high for Mazey, who planned to yank him after his 55thpitch.
But West Virginia's seven-run second inning had Mazey feeling relaxed enough to go and get his big guy while the stands were still full. It was a moment for Mountaineer fans to join Mazey in showing their appreciation for the program's most electric right arm since Chris Enochs.
Manoah had just broken John Radosevich's 55-year single season WVU strikeout record, which is now 125 and counting, but in Mazey's mind it was time for his big guy to go put the jacket on and go goof off with the fellas in the dugout.
"It couldn't have gone more perfectly," Mazey admitted. "He did what he needed to do. He threw the number of pitches we needed him to throw. We got a big lead for him so the stars lined up perfectly."
But why the hook in the fourth with still one out remaining, coach?
"I wanted to give an opportunity for him to be recognized by the fans," Mazey explained. "He may go down as one of the greatest pitchers in the history of this program. I just wanted the people who came out to see him pitch have an opportunity to recognize him."
A classy move by his coach, for sure, for a player who is getting recognized a lot these days.
Baseball America, the Miami Herald, The Athletic and MLB Network Radio are just a few of the interview requests baseball sports information director Charlie Healy has fulfilled in the last couple of weeks.
More requests will surely be forthcoming.
Depending upon to whom you talk, Manoah could be the first righthander taken in this year's draft, possibly as high as fifth to the Detroit Tigers, an organization with a history of coveting big, power arms.
Manoah clearly checks both of those boxes. Standing 6-feet-7 and weighing somewhere in the vicinity of 250 pounds, "AK", as he's known to his teammates, is one of the most imposing pitchers in college baseball today.
He was probably more imposing last year, weighing a couple of slices of pizzas north of 275, but he frequently ran out of gas the deeper he got into games.
That's the first difference you see from the Alek Manoah this year with an 8-3 record and a 1.91 earned run average, and the Alek Manoah last year who was two games below .500 with an ERA more than four.
"It's been a decision mentally," Manoah said of getting into much better shape this year. "It's six in the morning, it's cold, and you've got to get up and lift and you don't want to. That's the truth about it, man.
"Then my mindset changed to, 'You know what? This is a great opportunity.' Every time I got in the weight room I was getting better. My body was getting better, my conditioning was getting better and my mindset was getting tougher," he said.
The other big change happened once he returned from the Cape Cod League with a hard, biting slider to complement his explosive fastball. Developing a couple of complementary pitches has transformed Manoah from a hard-thrower who good hitters could eventually time, or average hitters could wait out until he got tired, to one who can dial up lots of nasty stuff from the first inning to the ninth.
Teammate Darius Hill noticed it during the first intersquad scrimmage of the spring when Manoah was free to start throwing again.
"He went against our starting lineup and stuck out like eight guys, and he was pretty electric," Hill said. "We knew we had something special then for the season."
Special, indeed.
During his 15-strikeout performance earlier this year against Texas Tech, Manoah was still touching 96 miles per hour on the radar gun in the ninth inning. It was the same deal one week later when he fanned 15 Kansas batters in a 1-0, 10-inning win over the Jayhawks.
In both of those games, Mazey didn't dare go anywhere near the mound, no matter how high Manoah's pitch count was getting.
Prior to Thursday night's win over George Washington, Manoah limited Kansas State to just three hits with 13 strikeouts in eight innings in a 6-0 blanking out in Manhattan last Friday.
In reality, he's only had a couple poor performances this year – at Oregon State when he gave up four earned runs in two-plus innings in his shortest stint of the year and the other at Baylor when he gave up five earned runs in 7.1 innings at Baylor. He also absorbed the loss in his head-to-head matchup with TCU's Nick Lodolo, another projected first rounder, when the Horned Frogs touched him up for four earned runs on eight hits in six innings.
Other than that, he's been virtually unhittable.
"His maturity is through the roof now," Hill admitted. "He obviously understands how good he is, and he's learned to stay within himself. He doesn't need to do too much, and he knows his abilities will take him there. Whoever picks him in a month is going to get a really good arm who's motivated and will do his best to help the team win any way he can."
"There was some immaturity my first two years, and I just tried to come out and blow fastballs by people," Manoah added. "As a big guy, it's hard to get all those limbs in the right spot every time. It's hard to stay consistent every time trying to throw as hard as you can, and I think once I just focused on mechanics – the velocity has been there either way – it connected and that opened the door to everything."
Soon, the next door he opens will most likely be life changing.
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