Left-hander Sean Manaea has a lengthy track record of being a decent mid-rotation starter, but the past couple of years have been challenging. Overall, he has an earned run average of 4.10 in just over 1,000 career innings at the major league level. He has struck out roughly a quarter of batters faced in each of the past four full seasons and has never had a walk rate higher than 8.4%.

But in 2022, his performance dipped, as his ERA jumped to 4.96 with the Padres. His peripherals were still pretty strong, as he struck out 23.2% of batters faced and walked just 7.5%, but it was nonetheless a poor time for diminished results as he was heading into free agency for the first time.

The Giants took a shot on Manaea, giving him a two-year, $25MM deal that allowed him to opt out after the first season. The club was aggressive in deploying openers, only giving Manaea 10 actual starts, but he logged 117 2/3 innings on the year over 37 appearances. He finished with a 4.44 ERA, 25.7% strikeout rate and 8.4% walk rate. Though those results were more decent than spectacular, he still decided to trigger his opt-out and return to the open market.

Things get a little more interesting when digging deeper into his season, which may give more insight into his decision to try free agency again. Notably, Manaea added a sweeper this year and had great results with it. Per Statcast data, he first threw the pitch on May 30 and ultimately tossed it 214 times, 10.4% of his pitches thrown on the season overall. He felt comfortable throwing it to both righties and lefties, with a perfect split of 107 sweepers thrown to each. That resulted in a huge whiff percentage of 35.1% and a batting line of .140/.161/.163. Even when batters did make contact, the 82.8mph average exit velocity was easily the lowest of any of his offerings.

The impact on his overall results is quite clear. In his first 11 appearances of the year, prior to introducing the sweeper, he had a 6.61 ERA, 28.9% strikeout rate, 12.5% walk rate, 32.6% ground ball rate and eight home runs in just 32 2/3 innings. The rest of the way, he had a 3.60 ERA, 24.2% strikeout rate, 6.6% walk rate, 44% ground ball rate and six home runs in 85 innings. The Giants gave him four actual starts to finish the year and he posted a 2.25 ERA in those, averaging six innings per start.

This is still a fairly small sample size of results but the change in his arsenal at least gives some reason to believe that it may not just be a fluke. Last month, Driveline tweeted some video of a session with Manaea which showed him also trying out a splitter, perhaps suggesting Manaea is still trying to find yet another gear going forward.

MLBTR’s Top 50 Free Agents predicted Manaea for a contract of two years and $22MM, an average annual value of $11MM. That’s roughly the going rate for a back-end innings eater these days. MLBTR’s Contract Tracker shows that Lance Lynn got $11MM while Kyle Gibson got $13MM. Jack Flaherty got $14MM and Luis Severino $13MM despite a poor platform seasons, while Frankie Montas got $16MM even though he missed almost all of the year recovering from shoulder surgery. Tyler Mahle got $22MM over two years even though he’s going to miss at least part of the upcoming campaign while rehabbing from Tommy John surgery.

If Manaea can maintain the results he showed over the final four months of 2023, he could be a bargain, especially with pitchers like Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery set for nine-figure deals. The need for starting pitching is still high and just about every club would benefit from the kind of performance Manaea seems capable of. His market has been very quiet this winter, with the Giants reportedly interested in a reunion but no other suitors publicly mentioned.