Blue Jays fans booing Alek Manoah off the home field aren’t helping matters for struggling pitcher

At the lowest point in Alek Manoah’s baseball life — trying desperately to fix what’s sent his season completely off the rails, after appearing to be on the verge of tears in the dugout following his last start — some of the 23,982 in attendance at the Rogers Centre on Monday night decided their best course of action was to kick him while he was down.

Manoah walked off the mound after the greatest failure of his career and heard boos from the hometown fans.

I asked Blue Jays manager John Schneider how he felt when Manoah was being booed off the field. He gave a little roll of the eyes at the memory before answering.

“Fans are always allowed to have their opinion,” said the first-year skipper. “And I think that you have to really look at the big picture. Look at the way that this country has supported him over his career here and understand that people react in ways that are, you know, very in the moment.

“Very quickly, those boos (can) turn into cheers, you know what I mean? And Alek understands that as well.”

The manager was being diplomatic. His centre-fielder was more direct.

“It’s deflating,” Kevin Kiermaier said on the Star’s “Deep Left Field” podcast, which drops Thursday afternoon. “It hurts. I had a couple of times in Tampa where I had a couple of bad stretches and, trust me, it bothered me more than anyone, and to hear boos … it crushes you.”

In the moment, those fans weren’t thinking about the big picture. They were thinking that the game was out of reach and they had barely settled into their seats. But does that make booing the home team the right thing to do?

Sure, there are times when home fans should let their team have it: if they’re being a bunch of lollygaggers; not putting forth the effort; making dumb, preventable mistakes.

And of course in the case of Anthony Bass recently, and players such as Yunel Escobar and Roberto Osuna before him, when a player does or says something egregious or offensive or both.

But booing for a poor performance, or even several poor performances, when the effort is clearly there but the results aren’t? Not nice. And not helpful, either.

After a quick scan of Twitter replies — always the best way to judge reasoned and rational responses — it appears the two biggest reasons people have for booing the team they purport to be fans of are: because they paid for a ticket, and because professional athletes make a lot of money.

Paying for a ticket gets you into the game. The return on your investment beyond that is that your team will do its best to win — that’s it. Not that they promise you a win or even a competitive game one way or the other, just a big-league effort to try to send you home happy.

This is where things get a little murky in baseball compared to the other major sports, because there’s no way to take the ball away from the other team. No battle in the corners to win, no loose ball to outhustle an opponent for. Unlike other sports, baseball isn’t a game you can win by wanting it more. You get your 27 outs and they get theirs. Effort can be difficult to assess.

“I think the one thing about our team is that, even though it may not be where we want it to be or where everyone expects it to be, effort is always there,” said right-fielder George Springer, whose two-run home run in the third inning Tuesday night gave the Jays the lead for good in their series-evening 5-1 win over Houston. “I don’t think effort is ever an issue on this team. I think guys play hard. And at the end of the day if we don’t win, it’s frustrating for us, it’s frustrating for fans, it’s frustrating for everybody.”

As for the money they make, members of the Jays, Maple Leafs and Raptors and their contemporaries are in an entirely different stratosphere than the overwhelming majority of people who come to watch them play. But that doesn’t make them any less human, something a lot of people seem to forget a lot of the time.

The fact that they make a lot more money than us doesn’t mean they should be seen as a dumping ground for momentary frustrations.

The song says “if they don’t win it’s a shame,” not “if they don’t win I’m going to flip out and scream at them.”

Booing a home team that’s giving a strong effort and getting beaten isn’t being a passionate fan. Booing a player who is beside himself over his struggles isn’t helpful. It’s not going to make them play better and it’s not going to get you your money back.

It’s just boorish.

Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star and host of the baseball podcast “Deep Left Field.” Follow him on Twitter: @wilnerness