Marklund says the force is with him
Royals' star prospect used lost summer to rest and work on his arsenal of pitches
Kansas City Royals pitching prospect Brandon Marklund has ample interests to help him navigate the excess free time brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 24-year-old right-handed reliever from North Vancouver is a Canucks fan. He last appeared on this newspaper's website during the NHL club's playoff run last season, thanks to our reporters embedding his tweet exclaiming “Elias Pettersson is not 165lbs. Can NBCSN stop repeating that he is? He hasn't been 165lbs since we drafted him two years ago,” in a game story post.
Marklund was a politics and government major at Bryan College, in Dayton, Tenn. He's into renaissance art and renaissance architecture. He's keen on sciences, too, listing Why Does E=mc2? and The Quantum Universe among the books that he's been reading.
He falls back on that when you ask if minor-league baseball being shut down last summer cost him the momentum he built in 2019 when he fashioned a minuscule 0.46 earned run average in 24 games with the single-A Lexington Legends. Marklund believes these last 10 to 12 months have given him a chance to build up more “potential energy.”
“The idea is that the farther you pull back a spring, the more there is for the spring to turn into kinetic energy,” said Marklund, an alum of the North Shore Twins, a B.C. Premier League team.
“The stronger the spring is, the more force it can withstand, and therefore result in more kinetic energy when the force is let go. However, if you pull the spring with too much force, the spring will deform. So the spring needs to be pulled back to its optimal point with optimal force to get the best results.
“The more I train and get closer to optimal strength and mobility, or the more I optimize my pitching mechanics, is the closer I get to the best possible version of myself as a pitcher.”
It's not your typical answer about such things, but there's little typical in his entire tale.
Marklund was passed over in the Major League Baseball draft after his 2018 senior season at Bryan, which plays at the National
Association of Intercollegiate Athletics level, same as the UBC Thunderbirds. Marklund went to the Auckland Tuatara of the Australian Baseball League afterward and Kansas City signed him as a free agent after seeing him there.
Marklund's ERA with Lexington — the result of giving up a mere two earned runs over 391/3 innings — was the lowest of any minor-league hurler at any level who had thrown at least 33 innings in the 2019 season. Marklund was 4-0 with six saves during that South Atlantic League regular-season stint, allowing 23 hits while striking out 44 and walking 19.
He helped Lexington win the league title and then Team Canada called on him for the Premier 12 Tournament in Tokyo in November 2019.
This past summer's minor-league season was cancelled in June. Marklund took 10 to 12 weeks off throwing. He says the Royals didn't require him to take part in their five-week instructional league this fall because of how busy his last couple of years have been. Marklund spent six weeks at Bryan and worked out there before coming home in October.
The six-foot-two, 205-pound Marklund possesses a four-pitch arsenal — a fastball, sinker, slurve and change-up — and feels he was throwing his slurve harder and getting more break on it at Bryan this off-season. He's eager to try it out on pro hitters. His fastball clocks in around 95 to 97 miles per hour.
Start dates for this coming season remain a work in progress. Baseball America is reporting that players destined for the double-A and two single-A levels won't begin spring training camps until after the MLB and triple-A players have departed the spring training complexes. There are suggestions that players like Marklund could be asked to report to spring training in April, and then have their seasons begin in May, or about a month after a traditional schedule.
That, of course, is all tied to how Canada and the U.S. are dealing with COVID-19.
“There's a lot we don't know yet,” said Marklund. “It's OK to be frustrated because you care. It's natural for anyone. It's silly to get too caught up in that frustration.
“I'd love to have a regular spring training. I'd love a chance to go get prepared at our complex beforehand. That's not a reality. It's OK. I believe that the people who succeed best in these circumstances find ways to make it work instead of making excuses for why it won't work.”