The Oakland A’s waited a little longer than usual to get their starting rotation into Cactus League spring training games, and so far it’s been worth the extra wait.
After Chris Bassitt and Jesús Luzardo aced their own spring debuts the past few days, Sean Manaea followed with three sharp innings on Saturday, leading the A’s to a 5-2 victory over the Cincinnati Reds.
The impressive part of Manaea’s outing wasn’t just the clean results, which don’t mean much in an exhibition contest, but rather the way he achieved them. His velocity had been down in recent years, but in this game he was throwing his fastball around 93-94 mph, reports Shayna Rubin of the Mercury News.