Yankees fans thrilled to see former Blue Jays enemy get shelled back to minor leagues

The Yankees captured a thriller over the Blue Jays on Monday night and it's possible they may have been motivated by some weekend news that concerned a former disliked Toronto pitcher.

From pretty much the moment he entered MLB, Alek Manoah was universally hated by New York Yankees fans. The righty first made a name for himself at Yankee Stadium, where he fired six shutout innings in his MLB debut with the Blue Jays back in 2021.

But he became public enemy No. 1 in the Bronx in November of 2022, when he hopped on a podcast and called Gerrit Cole “the worst cheater in baseball history” due to Cole’s use of Spider Tack (a substance whose use was widespread at the time and hardly ever policed). 

Nearly four years later, Cole’s now a Cy Young winner, and still one of the better starters in baseball as he gets set to make his much-anticipated return to the Yankees rotation following last year’s Tommy John surgery. Manoah, meanwhile, might be out of MLB for good.

His latest outing over the weekend, in which he gave up eight runs on six hits and three walks to the Los Angeles Dodgers, was so pathetic that even the lowly Angels felt compelled to demote him to Triple-A immediately afterward.

Remember Alek Manoah, Yankees fans? His MLB career could be nearing the end

Saturday’s debacle was just the latest indignity in what’s been a shocking fall for the former Blue Jays ace. He looked set to be a thorn in the Yankees’ side for years to come after his first couple of seasons in Toronto, with a 2.60 ERA across his first 51 starts that included multiple gems against New York. 

Manoah was so bad in 2023 that the Jays sent him all the way down to their Complex League team to work on his mechanics. But nothing seemed to help, and after elbow surgery in 2024, Toronto cut ties with him entirely. He’s been bouncing around the league ever since, serving a stint with the Braves before landing with the Angels this past winter. 

His latest outing runs his ERA for the year up to a whopping 9.82, with eight earned runs and eight walks in just 7 1/3 innings of work. Is that karma at work? Who’s to say, but we’d simply advise everybody to make sure you’ll be sticking around for a while before you run your mouth at a future Hall of Famer who was making All-Star teams while you were still in high school.

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