Alek Manoah's comeback bid with the Angels is over

MLB Trade Rumors confirmed it Wednesday: the Angels have released right-hander Alek Manoah, ending a stint in Anaheim that started with real hope and ended with a 16.14 ERA at Triple-A. It's the kind of move that barely registers on a July transactions wire, but for anyone who remembers what Manoah used to be, it's a gut punch.

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Angels Release Alek Manoah t.co/NcnCVqD8bR

Rewind to 2021 and 2022 and Manoah was one of the best young arms in baseball. He posted a 2.60 ERA over 308 1/3 innings for the Blue Jays across those two seasons and finished 3rd in AL Cy Young voting in 2022 behind a 2.24 ERA. He was a fastball-command-and-fury guy who looked like a frontline starter for a decade. Then it all fell apart — a 5.67 ERA across 119 innings from 2023 on, shoulder problems, and eventually Tommy John surgery in June 2024 that wiped out most of two seasons.

The Angels bet on the reclamation anyway, signing Manoah to a $1.95 million major league deal in December hoping a change of scenery and a healthy arm could jumpstart the old form. It didn't. He was outrighted off the 40-man roster back in May, made just 3 relief appearances for the big-league club — 6 scoreless innings to start, then an 8-earned-run disaster on May 16 — and got buried at Triple-A Salt Lake from there. Over 30 2/3 innings after that demotion he walked 42 batters, hit 9 more, and gave up 11 home runs. His fastball, which used to sit mid-90s in Toronto, was reportedly sitting in the upper-80s.

That kind of velocity drop after Tommy John and shoulder trouble is the real story here — it's not just bad luck, it's a guy who may simply not have the same arm anymore at 28. Releasing him now, rather than riding out the rest of the minor league deal, tells you the Angels didn't see a path back even with the rest of the season to work with.

Manoah is a free agent again, technically available for a minor league flier from any of the other 29 teams looking for reclamation projects in August. But the market for a former All-Star throwing 87 mph with 42 walks in a month of Triple-A ball is going to be brutally thin. If nobody bites, this might be the year the Manoah comeback story quietly ends instead of continues.