Stroman will make you want to believe

Pitcher focused on early return from knee injury

Head over to Marcus Stroman’s Instagram page and you’ ll be greeted with the same sorts of images and videos that he’s been posting all season. Blue Jays paraphernalia. Family. Various swag. Poolside lounging. His terrific shocks of hair. Marcus mugging for the camera with his friends, or simply by himself.

And shots of him working out — rehabbing. So much rehabbing. Knee-strengthening exercises. Running. Weights. Pushing the agility of his rebuilt knee (Stroman tore his anterior cruciate ligament in Dunedin back in early March, and the surgery to repair such injuries requires a new ligament, usually harvested from elsewhere within the patient’s body, to be grafted into the torn one’s place). Working out in the pool. Working out on the track. Working out in the gym. And, yes, on the field. And throwing. The results certainly look very encouraging. And while those can be deceiving given that we’re talking about a knee that endured reconstructive surgery just four months ago — a procedure it normally takes six to nine months to fully recover from — if Stroman’s words and his good spirits are any indication, that’s exactly what’s happening.

The Jays are doing a good job of keeping quiet any excitement they may have at the possibility, but Stroman isn’t hiding his intentions. Mixed in with the workout pictures and various positive or inspirational thoughts that he shares on social media, Stroman openly states his goal is to return to the mound again this season.

“Just crushed a pool workout. Knee feeling amazing. Class then another training session tonight.

“Who’s more motivated than me though?” he tweeted on Thursday, followed by his ever-present hashtag “#HDMH” — Height Doesn’t Measure Heart,” a personal aphorism borne out of constant doubts (from others, obviously) about whether he could make it as an undersized starting pitcher.

Later, after a fan implored him to return in August, he replied, “trying man. Two-adays 6 days a week, nutrition plan, rehab, therapy, etc. Doing everything in my power to be back with my boys!”

A day later he was downright emphatic. “I’ll be back this year,” he tweeted.

What Stroman lacks in height — he’s listed at 5-foot-8, some might say generously — he makes up for in determination and positivity.

“If you ask Marcus he’d probably say yes,” quipped Alex Anthopoulos when asked on a local radio show in Toronto last month about a potential return by September, “and he’d probably even tell you earlier than that.”

“I’ve asked our training staff the same thing and they said, ‘Look, we wouldn’t rule it out, but ultimately we’d expect it to be longer than that.’ Not that he can’t — you see guys like Yovani Gallardo came back in, I think, four months — but this is a long-term piece for us. He’s a long-term asset — we have to make sure that we keep that in mind.”

Gallardo’s case certainly has been one that Jays fans zeroed in on almost immediately in the aftermath of Stroman’s injury. The current Texas Rangers starter blew out his ACL in early May of 2008 — two months farther into the season than Stroman — while pitching for the Brewers, yet still managed to make a start in September and another in the playoffs, as well.

“Chris Brock tore his ACL in 1999 as a member of the San Francisco Giants after landing awkwardly on first base while running out a grounder,” explained Andrew Keh of the New York Times in a 2012 piece on the rare phenomenon of pitchers having ACL tears, written in the wake of the great Mariano Rivera suffering one. Brock, he explains, was throwing off a mound 3½ months later.

“It can be a short rehab time if you want it to be, if you challenge yourself and give yourself something to work toward,” Brock told Keh.

If that was really all it took we might see Stroman on the field already.

Unfortunately, Brock’s confidence may not quite jibe with the realities of each individual’s injury. Not all bodies heal in exactly the same way, and the fact that Stroman tore up his left knee — the one on his landing leg — also makes a difference. ESPN’s Stephanie Bell noted in a piece back in March that “the demands on the landing leg have more to do with control and balance, as opposed to power and drive,” and that Gallardo maybe isn’t a great parallel for Stroman, as he injured his right knee.

Still, if the mental aspect of the recovery process, and the

He’s a long-term asset — we have to …keep that

in mind

willingness to put the work in are worth anything at all, Stroman should be well ahead of the curve.

“We’ll be open-minded if things develop and things come sooner than we expected,” Anthopoulos said. “I don’t think we’ll have a sense of that until the end of July or mid-August.”

That end of July is already starting to come into view, and while nobody could guess as to what his role might be if he were actually capable of returning, this Jays team, which could theoretically play themselves out of the trade market with a collapse between now and July 31st, could certainly use a little magic.

Most of the chatter around the Jays in recent weeks has been about finding saviours on the trade market. Some of it, like a recent piece from Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs, has even been about making Stroman the player being exchanged for those saviours. But who really wants that? Who wouldn’t much rather the Jays’ playoff-charging ace emerge not from Cincinnati or Oakland or Miami, but from the campus of Duke University, fresh out of a knee brace?

It’s too much to ask, but he sure makes you want to believe he’s the right person to ask it of. He sure makes you want to believe he’s pitching this year.