Alek Manoah calling Gerrit Cole ‘worst cheater in baseball history’ is a take from Planet Neptune

No wonder Alek Manoah’s Blue Jays teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr. called the eventually-disappointing 2022 Toronto season “a movie”. These guys simply … haven’t seen that many movies.

Clearly, according to Manoah’s latest comments, “Eight Men Out” isn’t on rotation in the Jays multiplex. Otherwise, the burly right-hander definitely would’ve known that Yankees ace Gerrit Cole was not, in fact, the “biggest cheater in baseball history”.

Not even top 10, really. Top 50. Top 100. Top 1,000? It’s worth debating whether Cole belongs among the thousand-biggest cheaters in baseball history, and his ranking is heavily skewed by Manoah telling basketball star Serge Ibaka that he’s earned the No. 1 spot.

Despite proving absolutely nothing in head-to-head matchups throughout a 2022 season that was supposed to belong to them, Guerrero Jr. and Manoah can’t seem to keep the Yankees out of their mouths this offseason. I wouldn’t be that excited to have shaved a year off my contention window, but I guess I’m just built different.

Vlad’s jabs at least made sense, though. He hates the Yankees, and he wants to be a big man and claim he’d turn down their money in the middle of his prime. Manoah’s latest take? Straight off the International Space Station.

Yankees’ Gerrit Cole is biggest cheater in baseball history, per Blue Jays’ Alek Manoah

Clean Gerrit Cole finished just a little bit behind you in the 2022 AL Cy Young voting, but sure, yeah, worse than the 1919 Black Sox or 2017 Astros.

In case Manoah needs a history lesson, once upon a time, there was an entire team that conspired to throw a World Series. There were spitballs. There were emery boards. There were sharp rings used to scuff baseballs. There are guys in the Hall of Fame famous for slicing balls with razors and slathering them with all-world goop.

There was a league dominated by energy pill-poppers. There was a league dominated by anabolic steroid use. There was a Hit King once upon a time who bet on the very game he loved so dearly. There was, very recently, an AL West contender (forget which one) that devised a system of real-time, video-based sign stealing!

And then there’s Cole, who used Spider Tack to help his pitches boom in spin rate, as did the rest of MLB. Use of sticky substances was so widespread, in fact, that the league outlawed them en masse last summer. Seems like maybe something that wasn’t a Gerrit Cole-specific issue?

Manoah, whether he used Spider Tack or not, undoubtedly has some Spider Tack guys on his team. Some of his best friends are Spider Tack guys. Hell, some of his best friends are probably steroid users or Astros!

But I guess it’s Cole who’s the worst cheater of all time/the emblem of the “biggest scandal in baseball history,” which barely raised a blip last year (and oh, by the way, spin rates are now climbing once again because MLB forgot about the thing they outlawed).

Stay tuned for Manoah’s next bold take: Joe Mauer’s double being ruled foul in the 2009 ALDS in the Bronx was a worse crime than any presidential assassination.

3 high-profile trade targets Yankees need to revisit this offseason

The New York Yankees tried to make blockbuster moves at this year's trade deadline, but some didn't work. How about this offseason?