Manaea Got Away From it All to Get It All Together

An impromptu month-long trip to Southeast Asia in the wake of a disappointing AL Wild Card loss has A's starter Sean Manaea ready to take on a new season.

Every spring training camp is packed with stories from players who are happy to talk about their offseason, how they went hunting, fishing, played Mr. Mom or just kicked back.

That makes Sean Manaea’s offseason something of an outlier. He left baseball behind. He left the U.S. behind. At the end of the season, he felt he needed something of a radical break.

How’s this for a radical break? Manaea told NBC Sports-Bay Area that he headed for Southeast Asia. He went with a friend to Maldives, the island chain southwest of India and Sri Lanka and about midway between Africa and Malaysia. Then he went on his own to Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.

If you search online in Webster’s for the definition of “getting away from it all,” that trip is probably what pops up.

“That was really the first time I ventured outside the country on my own,” Manaea said. “I loved it. It was awesome. I didn’t have to listen to anybody. I just traveled and immersed myself in the culture.”

That trip came in the wake of a tumultuous 2019 season. Manaea spent most of the first half of the year rehabbing from shoulder surgery, then returned to make eight starts minor league starts at Stockton and then Las Vegas. He did OK, going 3-3 with a 4.71 ERA as he strengthened his shoulder and arm.

Once healthy, he returned to Oakland and took the American League by storm, going 4-0 in five starts with a 1.21 ERA. He allowed just 16 hits in 29.2 innings while walking seven and striking out 30. Small wonder then that the left-hander was picked to start in the AL Wild Card Game.

It did not go well. He started, lasted just two innings and was scorched for four runs. The A’s were cooked, knocked out of the playoffs by Tampa Bay, 5-1.

After that, Manaea needed a change of pace. After the game, he said the loss was “solely on me.” Time to head to Southeast Asia. He stuffed a few essentials in to a backpack and was airport-bound. No limos, executive suite hotels and guided tours for him.

“I wanted to get lost and see how that side of the world works,” Manaea said. “That was a reason why I wanted to take off, but I also wanted to get baseball out of my head. I was thinking about it too much and needed to back away and reset some things.

“I’m there for the experience of the place I’m in. I don’t have an interest in going somewhere else and then living a life of luxury. I want to experience the local culture, to get outside the cities and head for the villages and learn as much as I can about people in a different part of the world.”

He was gone for about a month. It took about half of that to get to the point where the playoff game wasn’t dominating his thoughts. But it worked. He’s at spring training now, and he’s where he needs to be, mentally as well as physically.

“The wild-card game sucked,” Manaea said. “It was really, really disappointing. After taking all this time off and getting so far away from everything, I slowly realized that I learned so much from it. I’m not happy about it but in a way, I’m glad that it happened. I don’t think I was mentally ready for that moment, but after this experience I feel like I can’t be beat.

"You get knocked down sometimes, but you get back up smarter and stronger.”

He was knocked around in his first Cactus League start, but Saturday in Las Vegas he debuted an adjusted grip on his slider and came away encouraged by a three-inning, two-run effort.

He threw the slider harder than in the past, about 85 mph, and let fly about 10 times. It’s likely to be an out pitch for him heading into 2020.