It’s been a slow go for the Stro’ Show
The Blue Jays were unable to complete a three-game sweep in Minnesota on Wednesday, as right-hander Fernando Romero, the Twins’ top pitching prospect, tossed 5 2/3 innings of shutout ball in his major-league debut to beat Marcus Stroman. The Jays’ right-hander is still looking for his first win this season after a head-scratching opening month.
The Twins won the matinee 4-0. Stroman, considered one of the game’s emerging pitchers, was making his sixth start of the season, and his first as a 27-year-old after celebrating his birthday the previous day. He had said after his prior start how much he was looking forward to putting a horrid April behind him and turning things around in May. But though some details had improved, the result was the same.
Minnesota left fielder Eddie Rosario smacked a solo homer to right in the first inning. Then, with the bases loaded in the third, the Twins scored again on a weak groundout by Max Kepler. The Jays were unable to get anything going against Romero and friends.
The Jays’ Kevin Pillar extended his hitting streak to nine games with a second-inning single, ending a streak of 10 consecutive extra-base hits. Manager John Gibbons was ejected for the first time this season after the plate umpire ruled a disputed swinging third strike on Teoscar Hernandez in the third inning. Aledmys Diaz, believing it was ball four, was strolling to second and was easily caught stealing.
Many have been wondering what’s wrong with Stroman after a breakout campaign earned him the cover of Canada’s MLB The Show 18. Has he lost an edge?
Over Stroman’s six years on the Jays’ major-league radar, since he first showed up at minor-league camp in Dunedin in the spring of 2013 and had to gate-crash the early camp for top prospects because he hadn’t been invited, the talented right-hander has used a perceived disrespect as incentive to excel.
There is the ever-present issue of his five-foot-seven height and how traditional baseball evaluators have always felt, rightly or wrongly, that shorter right-handers rarely have success as major-league starting pitchers. Why? Who knows, but Stroman feels it.
After he believed he had finally conquered that perception with a solid rookie campaign as a starter in 2014, he suffered a freak ACL tear to his right knee at spring training the following year. The Jays suggested he would be sidelined for the season. But Stroman felt the “gone for the season” scenario was a media-led perception and has held it against the fourth estate ever since.
Stroman utilized that done-for-theyear team prediction as incentive to beat the odds. He headed back to Duke for a rigorous rehab, and returned not just to pitch out of the bullpen as suggested but as a key starter down the stretch and into October, when the Jays lost the ALCS to the eventual champion Royals.
Stroman has a clear modus operandi he uses to self-motivate. It starts with working harder than anyone else, as his Height Doesn’t Measure Heart motto suggests.
Then there are some newer incentives that should keep his fires burning: losing his arbitration this spring, being underrated by the video game for which he’s on the cover, and not being No. 1 on his own staff. Those are the constants in maintaining a chip on his shoulder and providing an edge.
But it doesn’t feel like it’s the same edge. There’s a reduced feel of the us-against-theworld edginess. There’s a media empathy for his slow start that may explain the disappointing results. Heading into Wednesday, the 27-year-old was 134th out of 136 in ERA among those with 20-plus innings. His 1.82 WHIP (31 hits and 15 walks in his first 25 1⁄ 3 innings) was 130th.
It all went so smoothly for Stroman a year ago. He began 2017 with a gold medal in the World Baseball Classic, earning the tourney’s MVP award. Then there were the positives of 13 wins, 200 innings, a new mansion in Florida, more than $5 million in arbitration and the cover of the video game. Where was the driving adversity?
Tuesday was Stroman’s birthday. Although he wants to believe he is among the game’s elite starters, his resume is short and flawed. If he is ever in need of a role model, he might consider that the day he was born in 1991 was the same day that hall-of-fame righthander Nolan Ryan tossed a no-hitter against the Blue Jays in Texas. It was Ryan’s seventh career no-hitter at the age of 44. Now that’s a resume.
Sure, it was a different world back then. But let’s compare the two men and what they had accomplished by their 27th birthdays. By age 27, following his 1973 season, Ryan had 69 wins and a 3.05 ERA, with 59 complete games in 152 starts, with 1,205 strikeouts. As of Tuesday, Stroman had 37 wins and a 3.61 ERA, accumulating 484 strikeouts.
Maybe there is some explainable logic behind Stro’s slow start this season. After all, his infield defence has turned just three double plays behind him, even with his 52 baserunners in 32 1⁄3 innings. A year ago, in the same number of starts, he had been backed by nine double plays. There have been 17 groundball hits this season. Maybe he’s right about April and, with apologies to Kevin Barker, maybe he will be Mr. May. Only time will tell.
In the meantime, he sits on zero wins.