Alek Manoah's expected return date won't make a difference for the Blue Jays' season

The last time Toronto Blue Jays fans saw Alek Manoah, he was walking off the mound at Guaranteed Rate Field last May. He was lost for the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery and disappeared from the team’s immediate starting rotation plans.

Now, seven months later, we have a good idea of when we’ll see him back on the mound. Unfortunately, by the time the right-hander returns, it will likely be too late to have much of an impact on the outcome of the Blue Jays’ 2025 season.

Alek Manoah hopes to help the Blue Jays in a playoff race when he returns in August

Manoah joined the Deep Left Field podcast recently and told host Mike Wilner that he hopes to be back in August as a "trade deadline acquisition." That would be 14 months out from the surgery.

"That is something that every morning when I wake up, my alarm goes off every morning, I tell myself, this is what we're doing it for," Manoah said. "It's to go win a World Series next year, it's to go be a deadline acquisition for the Toronto Blue Jays and just help as much as I can for the last two months of the season. ... I'm striving to get bullpens in March, to get to live BPs in June and then get some rehabs going and hopefully be in a position to be able to help this team down the stretch.”

That would be good news for the Blue Jays and Manoah, who exploded onto the scene in 2021 with a 9-2 record and 3.22 ERA in 20 starts as a 23-year-old. He improved on that debut in 2022, finishing as a Cy Young finalist.

After going through some well-documented struggles in 2023, the now 26-year-old looked like he was back to his dominating self before hitting the IL last season. After a rocky season debut, he posted a 1.77 ERA over 20 1/3 innings into his fourth start, which was cut short by the elbow injury.

Blue Jays being in a playoff race seems unlikely

The problem for Manoah is that what the Blue Jays’ 2025 season will look like is anyone’s guess. Right now, in early January, the season projects to be as about as disappointing as the offseason has been so far. Nothing has been done to address the disappointing offense, and the strength of the roster remains in the starting rotation.

With veterans Kevin Gausman, José Berríos and Chris Bassitt leading the way, plus the surprising Bowden Francis hopefully replicating his 2024 breakout, adding Manoah back into the mix will make the Blue Jays’ strength even stronger.

But four months into the season, it might not even matter. Toronto’s fate will likely already be determined in the ever-challenging AL East. By the time August rolled around last season, the Blue Jays were already 14 games out of the division and 9.5 games out of the Wild Card race.

Joining Foul Territory this week, Wilner didn’t sound convinced that Manoah would be coming back into a playoff race with the Blue Jays in August.

"He's hoping to there's a playoff race to come back to," Wilner said. "It depends how many nothing-nothing wins the Blue Jays can get over the first 100 games of the season, I don't think too many."

Even though Manoah hopes to rejoin his squad in the middle of a playoff race in 2025, there’s a good chance he’ll be returning to a team that will, at that time, be starting to look ahead to 2026.