The Blue Jays haven’t responded to Alex Verdugo’s jabs at Alek Manoah with a bunch of full-throated defenses, and that might tell you what they think about the situation.
The Boston Red Sox right fielder became the latest player to criticize Manoah, one of the more demonstrative players in the game. Appearing on "Baseball Isn't Boring" earlier this week, Verdugo ripped Manoah for his on-field behavior. The Blue Jays ace barking at Bobby Dalbec and Franchy Cordero after striking them out last year, in particular, drew Verdugo’s ire.
But beyond Manoah saying “Coming from him? I don’t give a s–t” about the comments, it’s been pretty quiet from the Blue Jays side. Sportsnet Blue Jays writer Ben Nicholson-Smith said on the latest "Baseball Isn’t Boring” that the Jays seem to deliberately be avoiding the topic for a simple reason: They’re not taking it seriously.
“I asked John Schneider about it the day that it came out, and he’s basically like we don’t want to go there, we’re not talking about it. He was like no comment, essentially. Manoah too was not inclined to talk about it – I know he made one comment to Rob Longley of the Toronto Sun. That was the extent of the comments he made about it.
“So you know that it was on the radar of people around the team, of course. And yet, I think there was an inclination not to give it too much oxygen because the Blue Jays, from what I can tell, didn’t take Verdugo’s comments that seriously. They didn’t agree with them.”
The Blue Jays might not be publicly reacting to it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t quickly end up on their radar.
“It’s still interesting, right?" Nicholson-Smith said. "This is one of the things that, like you said, as soon as it happened you know that the Blue Jays saw this. You know Alek Manoah is well aware of this, everyone probably even beyond the Blue Jays and Red Sox would see this because it is pretty notable.
"It’s not every day that you have players being so candid, because of course they think stuff like this behind closed doors, but it’s really interesting when you see it so open."
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