LAKELAND, Fla. — Detroit Tigers right-hander Matt Manning walked out of the visitor's clubhouse in a purple and white "Death Row Dawgs" T-shirt. He had just completed an electric spring training start against the New York Yankees in Tampa, shredding a top-heavy lineup of elite hitters with an array of swing-and-miss pitches.

Someone asked about his T-shirt.

"Yeah, 'Death Row Dawgs,' you know about this?" Manning asked.

"No, what's that?" the person responded.

"Death Row, U-dub, bruh," Manning said, as if everyone should know the origin of "Death Row Dawgs," the self-adopted nickname for the University of Washington football team.

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And then Manning's tone — for the first time in his career — was off-putting in his post-start press conference.

"I don't think I'm competing for anything," Manning said that day in Tampa. "If anything, I'm competing with myself, how good I can be. They're going to take the best five pitchers out of camp. I know who I am as a pitcher. I'm just going to do me."

But Manning isn't a jerk.

Manning is, however, pitching with a new edge and new weapons in search of winning a spot on the Opening Day roster, hoping to avoid a demotion to Triple-A Toledo. He is one of three pitchers, along with Casey Mize and Reese Olson, competing for two openings in the starting rotation.

So far, his fierce approach to the roster battle is working in his favor. He seems on track to win one of the rotation jobs, especially now that he is finally throwing with more velocity and generating more swings and misses. His four-seam fastball, for example, is averaging 94.9 mph with a 42% whiff rate through three starts.

"He's confident, and he's got a little edge to him," Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. "He believes in what he's doing and the work he put in. He did a lot of work this winter to come to camp ready, and it's showing on the field and in the competition."

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Manning, 26, spent his offseason in Sacramento, California, the city where he grew up. He stood out as one of the most active pitchers in communication with pitching coach Chris Fetter and assistant pitching coach Robin Lund, among other coaches. There was constant dialogue between them.

He invested a lot of time preparing for spring training.

His teammates, old and new, have taken notice.

"It's classic Matt," said catcher Jake Rogers. "That's what we've been pushing him to do, to be aggressive, throw his stuff in the zone and trust it. That's what he's doing."

"He's looking really great," Mize said.

"I didn't know anything about him coming in," said right-hander Jack Flaherty, a newcomer who has struck up a friendship with Manning. "Not in a bad way, but I didn't know. I learned that he works hard. He is already good, and he wants to be really, really good. He's got an edge and competitiveness to him that goes a long way."

The new-and-improved version of Manning, a former first-round draft pick out of high school, is most noticeable based on the adjustments to his secondary pitches, specifically his slider and his changeup.

Manning put a harder slider into his pitch mix and is now throwing two types of sliders, a sweeper around 82 mph and a bullet slider around 86 mph. He swapped out his old changeup, which wasn't ever a consistent pitch, in exchange for a new splitter.

He implemented the harder slider because he wanted to throw three breaking ball shapes to right-handed hitters, giving him the bullet slider, sweeping slider and hammer curveball.

"If I don't have my sweeper one day, I can go to that one," Manning said. "But if I show you one, you're going to see the same thing from another, except it's going to have a different movement. It's going to be harder to pick out of the three breaking balls."

He implemented the splitter — ditching his old changeup grip — to get more depth with his offspeed pitch, primarily used for left-handed hitters. He also needed to be able to throw his offspeed pitch as hard as possible without feeling for the perfect release.

The splitter grip allows him to do that.

"I like it a lot," Manning said. "I want to get to a point where I can throw it to some righties. There's so much room for error with it, so I can throw it hard, and it's really good. If I can throw it to the righties, I think that would be a good weapon."

Improvements to his secondary pitches and his four-seam fastball are related.

His fastball has averaged 94.9 mph in three spring training games, up from 93.4 mph in 15 starts last season. The fastball has been Manning's best pitch throughout his three-year MLB career because of his elite extension, but the extra velocity helps the secondary pitches.

Hinch isn't surprised at the developments.

"He's had swing and miss in him," Hinch said. "It's connected a little bit to velocity because he's exerting a little bit more and throwing the ball up a little bit more. It's not about fastball velocity being the end-all, be-all, it's about what it does to his other stuff. The changeup-split, whatever he's calling it, is a real pitch. The bullet slider is a real pitch. He has a lot of ways to attack aggressively."

Those changes are coming off a miserable season, but not for performance issues. He would have benefitted from missing more bats, but he wasn't able to stay on the field due to a pair of fluke injuries. He suffered right foot fractures, both on comebackers, in mid-April and early September.

"It's crazy when you can't walk," Manning said. "You walk for 25 years, and you can't walk. That'll do it to you."

In 2023, Manning finished with a 3.58 ERA, 21 walks and 50 strikeouts across 78 innings. He ranked in the sixth percentile with a 15.8% strikeout rate, the fifth percentile with an 18.8% whiff rate and the second percentile with a 22.5% chase rate. Manning knows all three of those metrics need significant boosts if he wants to be a frontline starter.

He has a 34% strikeout rate and a 32% whiff rate in three spring training games.

"I'm missing bats right now, which is good," Manning said, "but with two strikes, I don't need to be nastier. I just need to execute the pitch and not try to do too much."

Learning to sequence his new weapons to get strikeouts is the goal leading up to the regular season.

"How to use these pitches in different counts and how they're going to play off each other," Manning said. "I think I have really good weapons. It's just figuring it all out in one whole game. It's going to be good."

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After Manning's latest spring start, a strong performance against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Lakeland, teammate and friend Alex Faedo poked his head out of the Tigers' clubhouse. He looked at a group of reporters — which didn't include the person who asked about the "Death Row Dawgs" T-shirt — and introduced himself as Manning's spokesperson for his post-start press conference.

"This is my agent," Manning said, laughing. "Talk to Alex."

Someone joked that agent Scott Boras, who has represented Manning since the 2020 season, might be in jeopardy of losing his client to Faedo.

"I'm never firing that guy," Manning said.

Then, Manning returned to his usual tone and opened up about the adjustments he made in the offseason for the first time in spring training.

You see, he's not a jerk.

He's just a guy pitching with an edge.

Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers' Matt Manning has a new edge and is pitching like it