With one option remaining, the former prospect is under pressure to establish himself this season.
We discussed Javier Báez recently, but he isn’t the only the long-term Detroit Tigers player in real need of a reversal of fortune. Matt Manning will mark his ninth year in the organization this July. Things haven’t been trending in the right direction for him, and the club has a lot of talented young pitchers ahead on the depth chart.
After a pretty successful minor league career where he was regularly in the top group of pitching prospects in the game as he approached the major leagues, Manning debuted back in 2021. He was reasonably effective in part-time duty over the next few seasons, but struggled mightily to develop his stuff beyond the fastball and he dealt with several minor injuries along the way.
In 2022, he started the season with right shoulder inflammation that put him on the injured list, and he didn’t return until August. He then suffered a forearm strain late in the season. In 2023, he was drilled by a comebacker in April and suffered a fractured right foot. He finally returned in late June. Only two starts later, Stanton drilled him with a line drive to the foot and fractured it again. In 2024, it was a lat strain after a couple of rough starts early in the season got him sent down to Toledo in May.
The comebackers are just terrible luck, but it’s just been one thing after after another for him and as a result he’s never gotten any momentum going either. Manning has never had UCL reconstruction, or anything that seemed like a major injury. But there was always something, and the one season that he didn’t have any throwing related issues, he got his foot broken twice by comebackers. That is tough.
In 2024, Manning wasn’t much of a factor. He barely pitched for the Tigers last season despite the decimation of their starting rotation in June and July, making just five starts and dealing with a mid-season lat strain. As a result he was unable to take advantage of the rotation vacancies. He is now three seasons removed from topping 100 innings total in a season.
Manning hasn’t established himself as a starter, and he’s now down to his final option. It’s presumably time for the 27-year-old to move to the bullpen, but breaking into the Tigers relief corps isn’t going to be easy either.
The biggest problem for Manning, going all the way back to his minor league days, is his struggle to develop a swing and miss breaking ball. At the Double-A level in Erie back in 2018, his curveball reached its high water mark and was drawing future plus grades, but it was clear before then that he needed a harder breaking ball. For over six seasons and two different player development groups, he’s been trying to find an effective slider that he could command consistently. Meanwhile, the curveball just never became consistent enough to be a big weapon.
Manning never developed much of a changeup either, and that finally got some emphasis as he worked on a split-change last season. A good splitter could turn Manning’s career around rapidly, and probably would make the breaking balls less of a focus. That’s still a new work in progress, however. As for the breaking balls, he’s tinkered with sweepers and more traditional sliders, and found one that is at least effective, but he still isn’t getting a ton of whiffs. There were some signs of improvement in Toledo, and the sweeper pulled a 28.8 whiff percentage, which is a solid mark, but not impressive at that level. There’s still no sign of a dominant secondary pitch.
Finally, the big-time gas promised by Manning’s six-foot-six frame and excellent athleticism has never quite materialized either. For one brief moment in spring camp of 2020, we glimpsed the right-hander pumping 98-99 mph in a relief appearance against the Yankees . The work on the slider was still fairly new, and it was easy to hope that with the aptitude for pitching he’d shown since being drafted, he’d eventually put it together and break out. That turned out to be a bit of a high water mark for him instead. In the subsequent years, Manning has generally sat 93-95 mph with the fastball, rarely reaching back for more than 96 mph. In 2024 at Toledo, he touched 97 mph just twice all year long.
So there are just too many elements of his game that haven’t taken that last step. He has a better breaking ball now, and maybe the new changeup will show some promise. Last season the fastball got hit harder, but typically Manning’s fastball is solid and doesn’t give up big power numbers. It’s at least worth wondering how the whole package of skills might improve if he was letting it all out in short relief.
Manning does have one option remaining. He also doesn’t have a whole lot of trade value left at this point. So the Tigers are probably wise to give it one more year, but with their depth in starting pitching, and Sawyer Gipson-Long looking to return to action sometime this spring, there just isn’t much left on the bone in terms of keeping Manning in the Mud Hens’ rotation. It’s time to try something new.
Manning averaged 93.9 mph with his fastball in 2024. As always, it plays up a little because of his above average extension and solid riding action at the top of the zone. It’s a fairly cutterish fastball movement with good hop at the top of the zone, and as a reliever that may be hard to deal with at 95-97 mph the first time a hitter is seeing it. Throwing harder overall, the sweeper and change could be a little more effective. It certainly doesn’t seem like a slam dunk, but there is reason to think it could work.
One thing Manning does have going for him is the fact that he’s typically thrown a lot of strikes and kept a low walk rate. He lost a bit of that last year, but the injury may have played a role. Limiting walks is obviously crucial for a potential reliever who probably won’t punch out much more than 20 percent of hitters faced. If the stuff is at max levels, he’s got the command to make that work.
One way or another, he’s got to throw harder consistently, and the sweeper has to take another little step up in consistency, at a minimum. He needs more margin of error, and letting him go 100 percent in short bursts should give him that. There just isn’t time or roster space to keep him starting unless there is one heck of a breakout this year. But there is certainly a chance that he can become an effective reliever perhaps a bit in the mold of Jason Foley.
There’s a viable future in play for Manning this season, but some things that have gone wrong are going to have to start going right in a hurry. The Tigers roster just continues to get stronger, and there are more good arms coming up through the system behind those who debuted in 2024. There is some now or never in the air. Hopefully Manning can finally find another gear and carve out a new role for himself this season.