OAKLAND -- Sean Manaea walked away from his final A’s training camp outing excited to start the regular season. The 28-year-old left-hander wasn’t worried that he took the loss in Monday’s exhibition against the Giants. He wasn’t stressed about consistently pitching below 90 mph. He wasn’t overanalyzing the bases-clearing double that gave the Giants three runs in the second inning.
He was focused more on pitch quality that allowed him to retire his last 10 batters and work five innings over 65 pitches, 44 of which were strikes.
He ended this three-week training camp on a positive note, ready to step in as the A’s No. 2 starter behind ace Frankie Montas.
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“I thought I made some really good pitches today,” Manaea said. “Maybe some sequencing could’ve been different, but overall I thought it was good for the most part. I thought my slider was working. I thought I threw some pretty good changeups and I didn’t have any walks. I’ll always take that.”
Getting vintage Manaea on the mound Saturday will be as important as ever for an A’s team experiencing some setbacks in the starting rotation. A.J. Puk will be placed on the injured list with a shoulder strain that was evaluated Monday in Los Angeles. Jesus Luzardo initially will work out of the bullpen after missing two weeks in quarantine following a positive coronavirus test.
The A’s are lucky to have talents like Chris Bassitt and Daniel Mengden available to step into the rotation, but they won’t bring the dynamic stuff of those pitchers they’re replacing.
That’s why it’s vital the front end of the A’s rotation hits the ground running in a 60-game season where each contest counts nearly three times as much as it would over 162.
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Montas has been spitting fire throughout camp, with stamina, velocity and a pitch mix that should be tough to handle. Manaea and Mike Fiers, who will start Tuesday’s exhibition finale against the Giants, must be stable, effective and hard to hit. That will take pressure off of Mengden especially, who planned to be a long reliever and is joining the rotation relatively late in camp.
Manaea’s latest start inspired confidence, especially in terms of what his pitches did to hitters.
“He got the swings and misses that we’re used to seeing,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “We got his pitch count up close to 70, which is where we wanted to get it.”
Manaea was particularly happy with his slider, a pitch of emphasis during spring training and again in this camp. It generated plenty of swings and misses and foul balls while coming at hitter from a tough angle.
Velocity could’ve been the only real complaint from an outing where the score doesn’t matter. Melvin wasn’t too worried about it and questioned the Oakland Coliseum radar gun’s accuracy during early portions of the game. Neither was Manaea, who wasn’t stressed about hovering in the high 80s.
“I feel good. At the end of the day, that’s really all that matters,” Manaea said. “I’m not really worried about velocity right now. I think it’ll come back. As long as I feel good and my arm and everything else feels fine, then I can’t complain.”
The A’s have a stacked lineup that could carry them early, but they need solid pitching to be the serious World Series contender many think they can be in 2020. That means Manaea needs to bring his best right away and win the games he’s assigned to start. The top three pitchers must shine until the young bucks are back. Even with Bassitt and Mengden capable of being quality starters, it pulls talent from the bullpen. That isn’t a good thing, even if the A’s are in better shape than most teams temporarily losing two starters before the season even begins.
“It’s great to have this kind of depth,” Melvin said. “Mengden looked great last time out. He threw four innings and didn’t give up any runs. He tweaked some things in his delivery and is more aggressive with what he’s doing. It’s nice to be able to have that depth but, having said that, we don’t want to get too deep this early in the season. We were near the full complement the other day. You know you’re going to have to go through some issues before the season, but hopefully this is it, knock [on] wood, before we get to Opening Day.