Double-A Midland’s season has finally ended, and Oakland Athletics’ prospect Sean Manaea is a large part of the reason why the team was so successful in 2015. The starter went 6-0 in seven starts after being traded at the deadline, posting a 1.90 record over 42.2 innings.
Manaea came over to the Athletics before the July 31 trade deadline this season, when the Kansas City Royals gave up one of the top pitching prospects in baseball for three months of Ben Zobrist. A 2013 first round pick out of Indiana State University, Manaea has always been highly regarded by scouts.
His rapid ascent from rookie ball to Double-A shows just how talented of a pitcher he is, and he has yet to face any major bumps along the way. Despite his early success, 2015 proved to be his strongest season yet.
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Manaea posted a 29.5 percent strikeout rate with the Midland Rockhounds, while allowing opponents to bat just .217 against him. He stranded 85.2 percent of runners, and even his FIP was 2.95. FIP is an ERA-like stat, adjusted to penalize pitchers for walks and home runs while crediting them for strikeouts – effectively eliminating defense from the equation. Manaea’s is still better than most pitchers, meaning he should be capable of pitching in front of any defense – even one as porous as the A’s was this season.
If Manaea has one thing to work on in the upcoming season, it would be his walk rate. His hovered just below nine percent with Midland– a bit on the high side for a pitcher who has ace-like stuff. He averaged 3.16 walks per nine innings during his short tenure with the A’s this year, and that will be fairly unsustainable at the big league level, where hitters typically show more plate discipline. Even with all of the strikeouts to bail him out – 10.76 per nine – Manaea will need to improve his control before a callup is inevitable.
So after a strong Double-A season that included a stellar postseason, when should A’s fans expect to see Manaea in the big leagues?
It’s not quite time to get everyone’s hopes up just yet. Very, very few pitchers make the jump from Double-A to the majors, let alone do it successfully. It seems likely that Manaea would begin the year with Double-A, make a handful of starts, and then move up to the Triple-A level. Barring a string of catastrophic injuries, it seems unlikely that Manaea would even see September call-up time next season, given his relative inexperience. College pitchers are considerably different that high school arms, but 2015 was only his second full season, and he missed time at the beginning of the season with groin and abdominal issues. He also missed the 2013 season after having surgery to repair a pre-draft hip problem.
The A’s will likely be cautious with their third-overall best prospect and top-ranked arm, but Manaea could make a strong case for himself if he continues to perform the way he did with Midland in 2015.