Oakland Athletics Prospect Profile: Pitcher Sean Manaea

Sean Manaea is a big-time prospect for the Oakland Athletics, and he has all the tools to be a force in a big league rotation very soon.

The Oakland Athletics have a good history in recent years of making deals that bring in hot, young prospects that turn out to be big time players for the team. In July of last season, the A’s completed a trade that may have brought in the next prospect in that line.

On July 28th, the A’s traded away super utility man Ben Zobrist, whom they acquired in another trade from the Tampa Bay Rays in the previous offseason, to the Kansas City Royals, and got pitchers Aaron Brooks and Sean Manaea in return. Brooks pitched for the big league club in short stints in 2015 before being traded this offseason, but Manaea is the prized jewel of the deal.

Manaea, a 24-year-old left-hander, was picked in the first round (34th overall) of the 2013 draft by the Royals, and while he didn’t pitch in the organization that year, Baseball Prospectus named him their 78th-best prospect before the 2014 season. He debuted with the Wilmington Blue Rocks, the Royals’ High-A affiliate, in 2014, and wasted absolutely no time in impressing. In 25 starts, the Samoan pitcher recorded a 7-8 record, but an impressive 3.11 ERA and 1.282 WHIP. Over 121.1 innings, he allowed just 102 hits and struck out 146 opponents. Those numbers might have been even better had his season not been cut short by hip labrum surgery.

The injuries continued into 2015, as Manaea missed the early portion of the year with abdominal and groin issues, but he still appeared on the top-100 prospects list for MLB.com, Baseball America, and Baseball Prospectus. After debuting on June 24th with Kansas City’s rookie league affiliate, Manaea returned to Wilmington. He made four starts, and allowed 22 hits and struck out 22 in 19.2 innings. Manaea was subsequently promoted to the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, the Royals’ Double-A team. He only made two starts with the team, during which he struggled in seven innings, before the trade took him to the Oakland organization.

Manaea was placed immediately with Oakland’s Double-A affiliate, the Midland Rockhounds, and quickly proved himself as someone who deserves to be watched closely. He made seven starts for Midland, and dominated to the tune of a 6-0 record, 1.90 ERA, and 1.148 WHIP. He allowed just 7.2 hits per nine innings, while striking out an impressive 10.8 per nine. He closed the year in grand fashion, throwing six shutout innings while striking out 13 hitters in his final appearance of the year.

The deceptive lefty earned a lot of fans in the A’s organization, and in the prospect ranking groups. Although he mysteriously dropped out of MLB.com’s top-100, he jumped up to 45th in Baseball Prospectus, and 48th in Baseball America. His hard fastball, which routinely plays around 94 to 97 miles per hour (and looks harder because of a tricky delivery) , his strikeout slider, and his makeup as a pitcher could make him someone who cracks the big league roster this season.

Manaea made his Spring Training debut on Friday, and he was as good as advertised. In two short innings of work in his team’s split squad assignment, Manaea struck out four batters (including the side in the second), and allowed a hit and a walk. Afterwards, A’s manager Bob Melvin spoke highly of the young hurler, saying “we were impressed with him before, and even more so now” after the game.

The upside is there, of that there is no doubt, but like many talented, young pitchers, Manaea’s own body is his worst enemy at this point of his career. He was considered an option to be taken first overall in 2013, but his draft stock was hurt because of a hip injury, which remained a problem in 2014 before being repaired surgically. He also missed time in 2015 because of the ab and groin issues, but that could be contributed to a lack of conditioning after the hip surgery.

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If Manaea can put it all together while staying healthy, he could see time in the big leagues this season, staking a claim to a rotation spot for the next year. In a couple years down the road, Manaea and current A’s ace Sonny Gray could make quite the one-two punch at the top of Oakland’s starting five.