The minor-league season has been canceled, but the development of the Tigers’ prospects is still a critical aspect of the team’s rebuild. In this series, Lynn Henning will take a look at some of the key players. Today: Matt Manning.
From a strict pitching perspective, Matt Manning is on vacation. No throwing since last month. No throwing planned.
And no serious issues with that big right arm.
“I’m good right now,” he said Saturday, during a 20-minute phone chat. “Just some inflammation I was pitching through for a little bit of time. It just got to be too much and I had to get it looked at.”
The Tigers kingdom trembled for a moment or two when word came late in August that Manning was being “shut down” with a “forearm strain.” Those words are straight from the Tommy John School of Fan Fear.
But when all the doctors and all the MRIs and all the second, third and fourth experts were debriefed and reviewed, there was nothing dark about the medicals from a 22-year-old pitcher, who is 6-foot-6, 225 pounds, and who owns one of the definitive power arms in the Tigers’ warehouse.
“My rebuild time between starts was a little slow,” Manning said, meaning the fuel-gauge needle wasn’t close enough to full to please him. “There was nothing to point to where my velocity was dropping.
“I had quite a few doctors look at me across the country. I just needed a rest.”
So, he’s taking a break, as is another one-time Tigers first-rounder, Alex Faedo, who had the same fatigue — with no structural hang-ups — as his right arm was granted a breather.
Manning remains in Toledo under the watch of Tigers trainers and conditioning gurus. He is adding muscle and cardio capacity. But there is no throwing planned. Not yet. Maybe later on, Manning said, but at the moment his orders are clear: Let that right arm rest.
Manning’s simple, three-pitch report in September of 2020, four years after the Tigers drafted him, ninth overall, out of Sheldon High in Sacramento, California, is unchanged.
He has a four-seam fastball that hangs regularly in the mid-90s and can climb higher. He does not fool with a sinking two-seamer.
His straight, 12-to-6, standard-issue curveball is the pitch that has most improved. As in, it’s often lethal to guys holding bats. The Tigers’ coaches and computer-readouts decided a shift in lower-body involvement would put more spin and bite on Manning’s curve, and that’s the big gain in Manning’s and others’ minds as they look at 2020.
His change-up is on schedule to be the potential — that word, again — plus pitch.
‘Blessing in disguise’
But he will need more work in 2021. So will most prospects across the MLB landscape. Toss out a minor-league schedule in a coronavirus-ravaged 2020 baseball season, and the story in Manning’s case is unchanged: So much was lost. Building strength. Adding endurance. Sharpening pitches.
Toledo’s camp, where the Tigers 30-man taxi squad continues to sweat, could do only so much for the Tigers’ kid pitchers. Yes, they were working intrasquad games against the same faces that are still sparse enough to make coaches double as fill-in position players.
But these weren’t games, as such. Not of the kind 22-year-olds need, on the road, or at home, against different teams and hitters and situations.
The surprise is that Manning is more than fine with 2020. And with his layoff.
“Honestly, I think this year was a blessing in disguise,” said Manning, who rooms with Tigers right-hander Nolan Blackwood at the apartment complex that has been something of a team dormitory for most of the taxi squad.
“I hated that it happened,” he said, speaking of the shutdown. “But I was able to brush up on mechanics and on my lower half, and even now, my arm feels great and feels healthy as I work on making myself stronger.”
Manning details the “mechanics” in this way: He is “sitting back a little more.” There is more of a “glute load” and more input from his quadriceps muscles.
The word from Tigers evaluators is short and relatively upbeat:
“He has shown ability to locate his fastball well enough to use in any count for a strike,” said Dave Littlefield, who is chief of Tigers player development, in a Sunday text message. “He has shown major-league-quality secondary stuff, and like most pitchers moving toward the major leagues, consistency is the goal.”
No surprises there, with the first commandment for big-league starters — locating their fastball — pretty much Manning’s strong suit.
Anyone watching him last year at Double-A Erie would have nodded at Littlefield’s file. Manning started 24 games and had a 2.56 ERA, with a 0.98 WHIP, in 133⅔ innings. He allowed a mere 93 hits. He struck out 148 batters and unintentionally walked 38.
Notice also: Manning was socked for only seven home runs last season, pitching half the time in a hitter’s park at Erie. That would make him something of an alien when considering the Tigers rotation and some bad habits featured in recent years. Too many visiting teams have arrived at Comerica Park showing off this new dance fad — the home-run trot.
‘My time will come’
Now it’s 2020. Manning kicked off the COVID-19 season in July at Comerica Park as part of the Tigers’ 60-man cut. It was, well, a lesson.
“I think I got a little sense of the big-league scenery,” he said. “The game sped up on me sometimes, sure. I had to try and get ahead of hitters, stay out of three-ball counts. Stick to my pitching morals.”
It was in Detroit that most of the delivery adjustments began sinking in.
“Some tweaks, shaping my curveball, trying to make it look more like a fastball,” Manning said. “My fastball was pretty much the same, but more often in the mid-90s instead of dropping off later in the game.”
He isn’t sure when he next will throw a pitch in any kind of bullpen session. There has been talk with his bosses about maybe making a few tosses before Toledo closes camp at the end of September. Whether he will move next to Lakeland, Florida, for extended rehab, or for some kind of Instructional Camp that MLB is still considering for its 30 teams, is undetermined.
There are no imminent plans for a fourth pitch, although Manning said it’s possible that he and his coaches will begin playing soon with a slider.
But that’s all back-burner thinking for now.
“I’m sticking to fundamentals,” he said, “trying to focus on getting ahead of hitters, mixing in my off-speed stuff, sharpening those pitches up.
“I don’t think it’s a setback at all,” he said of his unplanned August layoff. “I want to play for a long time. But I got hurt — it just happens. I’m lucky it wasn’t worse. But I’ll come back stronger.
“My time will come.”
It will help if that “time” can reflect old baseball patterns: Show up in February for spring camp. Begin throwing real games in April. Then let a long season do its thing in making a young man with premier talent ready for showcase work.
August’s knockoff could and should be part of a timeline. One that gets a boost from patience.
A pitcher seems to have it. His team’s followers are working on it.
Previous reports
►Tigers, Franklin Perez take ‘conservative’ approach as prospect tries to regain his form
►Tigers’ Jason Foley working on more than 100-mph fastball to earn big-league ticket
►Can Tigers’ Nick Quintana justify his second-round status after enduring ‘first-year jitters’?
►Hitting is Tigers prospect Bryant Packard’s ‘favorite thing to do,’ and it shows
►Tigers’ Parker Meadows finding his swing, even with no minor-league season
►’Big, strong’ Dillon Dingler shows early signs of being answer at catcher for Tigers
Lynn Henning is a retired Detroit News sportswriter and freelance writer.