Mets’ Sean Manaea ‘proud’ to be pitching deep into games down the stretch

Sean Manaea has quickly developed into the ace of the Mets’ rotation.

The southpaw has been dominant since making a well-documented change to his mechanics inspired by watching Atlanta Braves Cy Young candidate Chris Sale mow down the Mets lineup in a start at Citi Field.

“It’s been a huge change for me,” Manaea said. “I think the results are speaking for themselves. I feel like I’ve been throwing more strikes, everything is kind of coming out of the same slot, and I just have a lot of confidence in my stuff right now.”

And that confidence certainly showed as he cruised his way through 6.2 more strong innings during Wednesday’s series finale against the Blue Jays, allowing just one run on three hits while walking four and striking out eight.

Manaea’s lone hiccup came during the bottom of the fourth when he allowed the first three batters to reach, loading the bases with nobody out, but he did well to battle back and limit the damage to just the one run.

“It was good,” he said. “The walks are obviously an issue, but other than that I felt like I got ahead of guys and was throwing my stuff for strikes. I felt good about my stuff and it was a better outing than my last time out.”

Unfortunately for Manaea, he was handed a no-decision as Blue Jays righty Bowden Francis was that much better, tossing eight hitless innings before the Mets finally broke through for a come-from-behind victory in the ninth.

But the 32-year-old has certainly settled in nicely after a bit of an up-and-down start to his first year in the Big Apple, pitching to a 2.72 ERA and 0.95 WHIP while striking out 98 batters over his last 15 outings.

More importantly though, Manaea has been excited about his ability to provide the Mets with tremendous length down the stretch in the Wild Card race, pitching into the seventh inning or longer 10 times and posting 10 quality starts over that span.

“I’ve been wanting to do this my whole career,” he said. “I just want to help this team win. Going deep in games is such a huge accomplishment and being able to do it consistently is something that I’ve been very proud of.”