TORONTO — When Marcus Stroman pitched for Duke University as the Friday night starter, the ace of the pitching staff, he followed a close game-day routine.
Get up at the same time; drink his coffee a certain way; go to the same sushi place around the corner for his pre-game meal. And then, once everything was in place, he’d take the mound at Jack Coombs Field and absolutely deal.
He was a different guy then. Younger, more raw, more naïve. He was still trying to strike everyone out, still trying to make batters look foolish. He’d yet to discover his two-seamer — a funky, contorted grip that he stumbled upon while playing around with a baseball in his condo one afternoon — which would unlock his true potential as a starter, and allow him to become an innings-eating, ground-balling, lineup-dominating pitcher at the front of the Toronto Blue Jays‘ rotation.
A lot has changed. But now, in the first Blue Jays post-season run in 22 years, Stroman has found his way back to starting on a Friday for his team, and he can hardly wait.
“This is definitely the biggest start of my career, hands down,” Stroman said on Thursday, looking forward to his Game 2 ALDS start against the Texas Rangers. “But I’m ready for it. This is why you play the game. I’m excited. I can’t wait to get out there. This is the stuff you dream about.”
Stroman’s been dreaming of it for a long time. Since he was a small Long Island kid who loved basketball but could play a mean second base as well. Since his strict-as-hell father was making him run windsprints after school before going home to consume the newspaper and test his reading comprehension. Since he turned down a $400,000 bonus offer from the Washington Nationals and went to Duke instead to study sociology and play ball.
It was there that he read the internet message boards that said the undersized pitcher the Blue Devils just recruited wouldn’t be able to line the fields at Jack Coombs Park. He printed out all that criticism and doubt, taping it to his wall and reading it over and over before he went to work out. It was there that Stroman developed what some would call an underdog complex and others would more accurately describe as an unyielding ambition.
No matter which side of that duality you fall on, it’s impossible to deny that Stroman is fuelled by the thoughts constantly swirling in his head that everyone in the stadium, everyone in the league, everyone in the world is doubting him – that we’re all saying he can’t do it. And when he steps on a mound, he lets all that frustration pour out.
“I feel like I do a good job of being able to bottle it up and use it when I need to. I’m a very emotional pitcher. I wear my heart on my sleeve — that’s how I’ve always been. I pitch with a lot of hate and anger and emotion in my heart,” Stroman said. “Yeah, hate. A lot of anger. A lot goes into it. I’m 5’8” — a lot of people doubt me. So that’s with me every single pitch on the mound.”
You get the sense he needs that perceived persecution to operate, and he really needed it for most of the last six months when he aggressively attacked a rehab schedule for the ACL surgery he underwent this March. It was as if the Blue Jays telling everyone he was done for the season was contrived, a master plan to motivate Stroman to work out two times a day, six days a week at his old stomping grounds – the same Jack Coombs Field they said he couldn’t line, while finishing off his degree simultaneously.
“I’m not scared to say it — I exhausted every opportunity and did everything in my power to get back to this team, I did — and it was not fun,” Stroman said. “I’ll never have to go through anything as hard as that in my life again.”
Now, he’s here, about to pitch a ballgame that has taken on quite a bit of added importance for the Blue Jays following their 5-3 loss in Game 1 of the series. Stroman will be tasked with outdueling Texas ace Cole Hamels, who has only powered the Rangers to wins in each of the last 10 games he’s started, no big deal.
Stroman certainly has the stuff to stand in with his Rangers counterpart. His two-seamer is nasty and generates all kinds of swing-and-miss or weak contact, which is why Stroman has used it more than 40 per cent of the time in his four starts since returning from surgery. He’ll also mix in a four-seamer that can hit 95, a wipe-out slider, a knifing cutter, a slow curveball and even a fading changeup that Stroman developed this season and comes in almost 10 mph slower than his hard stuff. When he mixes his six pitches and locates them on the edges of the strike zone Stroman can be as effective as anyone in the game, no matter how tall they are.
And then there’s the intensity he carries to the mound. It’s not unusual to see Stroman flexing his body in excitement and yelling to himself when the defence behind him turns a double play, and that’s just in the regular season, not in a playoff game like the one he’ll pitch in Friday — one that will come in front of a deliriously charged atmosphere and mean so much more.
“[Mark] Buehrle is always trying to get me to do less, but I’m always trying to tell him I need more to get me going,” Stroman said. “I’m just excited, man. This is an unbelievable opportunity, especially where I came from this past year. I’m ecstatic just to be here, you know what I mean? I’m ready to go out there and compete and dominate.”
In a lot of ways, Friday afternoon could be Stroman’s moment. The game will reach a lot more eyeballs in the United States than any of his prior starts. While he’s well known in Toronto — a city he says he loves — he doesn’t register quite as strongly in the country that houses 29 of MLB’s 30 franchises. A dominant performance in what’s as close to a must-win game as you can get for the Blue Jays, could thrust Stroman into the consciousness of a lot of fans who haven’t become aware of him yet.
It’s been a long time coming from those days at Duke, having his coffee the same way and ordering the same sushi rolls. And of course it comes on a Friday.
“I love it, I love it,” Stroman repeated. “I’m playing in the playoffs. This is why you play the game. I couldn’t be more excited. I’m not nervous. I’m not even slightly nervous. I haven’t pitched in nine days, I’m excited to get out there and get on the mound and get going.”