Stroman harnesses ‘hate’ to unleash the heat
Marcus Stroman, the ebullient Blue Jays right-hander who’s never far from a smile, took some reporters aback Thursday with an adjective he used to describe how he feels on the mound.
“I pitch with a lot of hate and anger and emotion in my heart,” he said.
“Hate?” his questioner asked, making sure he heard right.
“Hate, yeah. A lot of anger — a lot — goes into it,” Stroman said. “I’m fivefoot-eight, a lot of people doubt me, so that’s with me every single pitch on the mound.”
The 24-year-old, whom the Jays drafted with the 22nd overall pick in the 2012 draft in part because the teams who picked ahead of them were reluctant to pin their hopes on an undersized righty, will start for the Jays on Friday in Game 2 of their divisional series against the Texas Rangers.
It will be “hands down” the biggest start of Stroman’s young career.
“But I’m ready for it, you know what I mean?” he said. “This is why you play the game. I’m excited. I can’t wait to get out there.”
Stroman’s remarkable comeback story is now well known. Once thought lost for the season after tearing his left ACL on a routine fielding drill in spring training, Stroman took the injury in stride, went back to Duke University to finish his degree while simultaneously grinding through six months of rehab.
Although the team never counted on his return, Stroman vowed from the beginning he would be back. He made good on his promise in the final month of the season, sending a charge into the Jays’ rotation with four sterling September starts. He gave up just five total runs in his four outings, while allowing just four extra-base hits. Stunning, really, given all he had been through.
Jays manager John Gibbons recalled Thursday how Stroman told him after the injury, “I’ll see you in September.”
“I thought it was, you know, pipe dreams. We encouraged him, he went off and got his education, did his rehab and kept moving and moving. Next things you know, he’s here.”
Stroman said it was his father — Earl, a police detective on Long Island — who instilled in him his antagonistic mentality on the mound.
“He knew I wasn’t going to be the biggest guy in the room, so he told me to play with a chip on my shoulder — kind of don’t worry about what others say. So I pitch with a lot of emotion in my heart and I feel like that’s something that I need for me to be me. I do a good job of being able to bottle it up where it’s not too much, but it’s not too little. (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.”
It was that determined spirit that helped fuel his improbable return.
“I exhausted every opportunity and did everything in my power to get back to this team,” he said. “I did, and it was not fun — a lot of it was not fun. I made the best situation out of it but . . . I’ll never have to go through anything as hard as that in my life.”
At the same time, throughout the arduous rehab, Stroman always imagined himself in the position he is today.
“I didn’t necessarily know that it would play out like it has played out,” he said. “But in the back of my head — through all those workouts, while I was in class — was to get back, because I knew the team that we had was extremely special and we would be able to go pretty deep into the playoffs.
“So I made it a point of emphasis to get back to this team to be a part of something special and the fact that they were picking up new guys and winning all these games, that only made me more motivated and hungry to get back.”
Even Stroman’s opponent on Friday, the Rangers’ ace lefty Cole Hamels, was impressed by the young Jay’s unlikely comeback. “It’s absolutely tremendous,” he said. “I think it shows his true character just for the fact of being able to go to school and playing the game of baseball. That’s something that I don’t think I could have done, so he’s definitely got something pretty special with him.”
Like the Rangers’ version of David Price, Hamels was acquired by Texas at the trade deadline, keying a remarkable second-half run.
The former Phillies ace is no stranger to the post-season, having made it five straight seasons from 2007 to 2011, winning the World Series in 2008 and being named series MVP.
But on Thursday he recalled how he felt when he was in Stroman’s shoes — the naïveté and excitement before his first playoff start.
“You don’t know what success tastes like yet because you haven’t had it,” he said. “You don’t know what winning a World Series is like so you’re just going out there and I think enjoying the moment. That’s what I did.”