Sean Manaea followed up his best outing of the season by holding the Cardinals in check over seven scoreless innings in the Mets‘ 6-0 win on a miserably hot afternoon in St. Louis.
“Impressive,” manager Carlos Mendoza said of the left-hander’s 10-strikeout, zero walk start.
“What an outing, now back-to-back,” he continued. “The way he dominated that lineup, a pretty good lineup there, complete control of the game. The fastball, the sweeper. He’s attacking hitters getting ahead, putting them away, making pitches when he needs to.
“The fastball at the top of the zone, the two-seam, I mean everything. What an outing for him.”
It was just six days ago that Manaea held the Minnesota Twins scoreless over seven frames, allowing just two hits and a walk while striking out 11 on just 96 pitches. He needed just 102 in his nearly identical follow-up performance.
After a pair of rough outings – 6.52 ERA over 9.2 innings – to start the second half of the season, the 32-year-old has clearly found something. What has caused this turnaround for the left-hander in his debut season in Queens?
“I think he found a rhythm here where every pitch is working for him,” Mendoza said. “I think just the fact that he’s commanding the baseball. And he’s executing pitches when he needs to… it’s pretty impressive.”
Manaea said that he’s been better at “using his fastball to get ahead” of batters and then “the sweeper has been good as a first pitch or back-foot to guys.”
“I’ll say those two things, and finishing guys off early [in at-bats],” he added.
With his ERA down to 3.30 on the year over 120.0 innings, the lefty said he’s felt an increased “confidence in my fastball and slider.”
And that confidence in those pitches was on display in the third inning on Monday helping him work out of a tight spot.
With two down and runners on first and second and the Mets up 1-0, Willson Contreras, who entered Monday’s game 4-for-8 with two homers off the lefty was up and got ahead 3-1. Manaea delivered a slider for a called strike before challenging the Cardinals catcher on a 96 mph fastball up and out of the zone to end the inning.
“That’s a huge moment in the game,” he said. “I’ve faced Willson plenty of times and he’s got me pretty good over the years.
“In that moment in the game, the confidence [with] that 3-1 slider was huge and then the fastball to finish him off was incredible. So that was definitely a huge turning point in the…