RAISED FOR THIS
HOW STROMAN GREW INTO STARDOM
EACH JOURNEY was unique. Each story was special, until 30 or so similar-sounding tales converged at historic Municipal Stadium in northern Maryland, for the Washington Nationals’ 2009 pre-draft workout.
Marcus Stroman shagged flies in the outfield Willie Mays roamed while being racially taunted in his first professional game. He took grounders on the diamond once shared by the Homestead Grays. He made the most of his limited swings. “The second pitch, he hit it out, halfway up the lights,” said Anthony Frascogna, Stroman’s coach at Patchogue-Medford High School on Long Island. “It was unbelievable. There’s college kids there, and this kid right out of high school, taking cuts like a big leaguer, hitting a couple out.”
Too much time had passed. Too many drills had been completed. How much longer could the obvious be ignored?
“I had to be like the dopey dad, going to the scouts — thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this’ — to remind them, ‘Hey guys, you know, he pitches.’ And they were like, ‘Oh,’ like it was an afterthought that he pitched,” Frascogna said. “Then they let him throw some pitches at the end.”
Scouts stood behind the cage. Stroman stood where he belonged.
“When he threw his curveball, a scout flinched, like a batter getting frozen,” Frascogna said. “I remember saying to my wife, ‘I guess that’s as good a compliment as you’re gonna get.’”
WHEN you’re like no one else, you’re expected to be someone else.
When you’re an All-County point guard and standout quarterback, you’re too athletic to stand where David Wells did. When you are inducted into the National Honor Society and record as many A’s as K’s, you’re too smart to stick just to sports. When the most generous days measures you 5-foot-8, the mound is a distraction, not a destination.
But roughly 58 miles from his new locker at Citi Field — awaiting the Mets’ surprise trade acquisition for Saturday’s debut with the team — Stroman sacrificed too many hours to find time for doubt.
In the eastern Long Island hamlet of Medford, his father, Earl — a Suffolk County police detective — passed along his presunrise workout routine. Stroman was 6 when he begrudgingly began pulling sleds
and sprinting up hills. His father would force him to read the newspaper, then quiz him on the content. Failure required a return trip through the print.
When Stroman received his $1.8 million signing bonus from the Blue Jays, he bought his father a Rolex, with an engraving: “WITHOUT YOU, NOTHING WAS POSSIBLE!” Stroman’s mother, Adlin Auffant, tried to make sense of a bank statement, bursting into tears upon realizing her son paid off her mortgage. Stroman’s older sister, Sabria, who doubled as his best friend, received the wedding dress of her dreams.
“They’re a very close family,” longtime pitching coach Neal Heaton said. “He’s the type of kid who never forgets.”
Stroman’s parents split when he was in fifth grade, but they lived within a mile of each other. Their summers were centered around the schedule of teams like the Connetquot Chiefs, who traveled to dozens of distant locales, like Arizona, Mississippi and the Dominican Republic.
“He was always the best one on the team,” youth teammate Sean Apuzzo said. “But he never really acted like it. He was just fun to be around, and super smart. He just always knew what was going on
in any situation, and seemed really intelligent for his age.”
As an eighth grader, Stroman was promoted to Patchogue-Medford’s varsity baseball team.
“He had a special gift,” said Heaton, a former MLB All-Star. “Even at 9, he was a little chubby kid, but a tremendous athlete with an electric arm.”
Basketball was Stroman’s first love, but the undersized high school star stopped dreaming of the NBA when he stopped growing. He reluctantly dropped football following his freshman year after injuring his hand on a helmet in practice.
“We played a little schoolyard football with him, and he’d throw the ball like 60 yards,” said Frascogna, who coached the JV squad. “He was tough for defenses to handle.”
Stroman started at shortstop as a freshman. He entered the rotation the next year. He became the first junior to win the Carl Yastrzemski Award — given to Suffolk’s top player — while batting .400 and posting a 1.85 ERA.
“We knew we had the game in the bag when he was on the mound,” high school teammate Terrence Bohonan said. “He was an absolute beast. He was very driven, and very charismatic. There was no one like him.” Then came the showdown. Stroman had known Stony Brook’s Steven Matz since they were around 8 years old, when Stroman hit the first-ever homer off Matz. They’d played together on the Paveco Storm travel team. They’d battled in the 2004 Baseball Heaven July 4th Tournament in Yaphank, when Stroman’s Long Island Phillies topped Matz’s Three Village Yankees. They’d been roommates at the Area Code Games in California.
On April 16, 2009, the high school seniors — 40 percent of the Mets current rotation — put on a show for roughly 50 scouts, representing every major league team.
“I’ve been in the business 36 years, and never saw anything like that,” Mets scout Larry Izzo said. “Most of them were there to see Matz. He was a no-brainer. Stroman had a bigger hill to climb and he knew it. He had to fight for what he got. There weren’t many 5-foot-8 righties then. There aren’t now. But he thinks he’s 6-foot-8.
“If they could’ve opened up his chest, they’d have known a lot more.”
Matz struck out 12 for Ward Melville. Stroman struck out 14, landing on the wrong side of a 1-0 finish determined by a dropped third strike.
“Everyone was so impressed with Stroman,” said then-Dodgers scout Frank Bodner. “I’ve been in the presence of Mike Trout and [Anthony] Rizzo, and Stroman was the most competitive of any prospect I ever came across. His attitude, his need to excel, he was a modern-day Bob Gibson. He’s got guts. He went right at you.
“A lot of scouts pulled back because of his size, that he would break down long term, but that’s what drove him.”
Despite recording a 0.25 ERA as a senior — also hitting .350 with 22 stolen bases — Stroman’s size prevented his stock from soaring. Signability concerns dropped him deeper, with the Nationals selecting him in the 18th round — as a shortstop.
Stroman was offered a $400,000 signing bonus. He kept his commitment to Duke.
STROMAN was different. So, sometimes the rules would be, too.
“He is the only pitcher in my career — and I would think in anybody’s career — who had priority over everybody on the field on a pop-up,” former Duke pitching coach Sean Snedeker said. “If he wanted to run back and call off the shortstop, he could call off the shortstop. We trusted him to catch the ball more than anybody else.”
Stroman had been recruited as a shortstop and spent most of his freshman season in the infield, while also serving as a closer, earning ACC Freshman of the Year honors. As a junior, he reluctantly agreed to end his twoway play and led the NCAA in strikeouts in his lone season as a full-time starter.
“He challenged me as a coach,” thenassistant Edwin Thompson said. “In bullpen sessions, he got to a point where it was easy to throw strikes. He’d ask you to shrink the zone or have me yell at him while throwing a pitch to try and distract him. He makes you think outside the box. He always wanted more than was given to him.”
He was different. And sometimes the rules wouldn’t be.
Duke players were asked to be clean shaven, to follow a dress code, to refrain from wearing jewelry. The fashionista who later trademarked his own clothing line — Height Doesn’t Measure Heart (HDMH) — often drew then-head coach Sean McNally’s ire, arriving in his own style.
“Every day I’m like, ’Stro, can you please try and conform and do the things you’re supposed to do?’” then-pitching coach Sean Snedeker said. “But that was just him being himself. He wanted to be a little different. He feels that he’s different. And that’s in a good way.
“He had a little bit of the Stro’ Show already.”
Stroman departed school after three seasons — and returned three years later.
As Duke’s first-ever first-round pick (2012) prepared for his highly anticipated second season with the Blue Jays in 2015, Stroman tore the ACL in his left knee during a bunt fielding drill in spring training and underwent surgery.
After absorbing the devastation — calling his mother and father in tears, following the diagnosis — Stroman decided to fulfill the promise he made to his parents and complete his degree while recovering.
Typically, Stroman would begin rehab at 10 a.m., lasting three hours over two sessions. At 7 p.m., he’d finish class, occupying four hours of the day. He walked campus with seven figures to his name — and a face no one could ever place.
“Because this is Duke, everything’s about basketball,” said professor Mark Anthony
Neal, who taught Stroman that summer. “I had both Zion [Williamson] and RJ [Barrett] in my class, and there’s never an expectation — because they’re here for one year — that they’re ever gonna come back and finish their degree. But it says a great deal about who Marcus is as a person that getting his degree was still important to him even after he made it to the big leagues. ... In class, he was engaged and very attentive.”
Stroman defied season-ending expectations by returning that September and starting the deciding Game 5 win of the ALDS — the Jose Bautista bat flip game — in Toronto’s first series win in 22 years.
Between starts the next season, the sociology major donned a cap and gown and collected his diploma.
“My parents pushed me from a very early age to make sure that it was all academics first,” Stroman said then. “I was a kid who wasn’t allowed out if I wasn’t going to work, or I was the kid studying when everyone else was partying. ... I never thought I’d say I was thankful for tearing my ACL, but I am, because I grew so much as an individual.”
LESS than three weeks after beginning his professional career with Low-A Vancouver in July 2012, Stroman was promoted to Double-A New Hampshire. Less than four weeks later, he was suspended for 50 games for testing positive for methylhexaneamine, a banned stimulant he claimed to ingest via an over-the-counter supplement.
But less than two years after the incident, Stroman debuted with Toronto, becoming the first pitcher 5-8 or shorter to make more than two starts in the previous two decades, and one of only three right-handed pitchers 5-9 or shorter to make at least 30 starts since 1961.
By 2016, he’d be the Blue Jays ace, logging back-to-back 200-plus inning seasons. By 2017, he’d collect his first Gold Glove and lead Team USA to its first World Baseball Classic championship.
Born to a mother of Puerto Rican descent, Stroman once tweeted his desire to represent the island in the WBC. Years later, Stroman accepted Joe Torre’s invitation, and opted to play for his homeland, prompting several Puerto Rican fans to harass Auffant online.
In the title game against Puerto Rico, Stroman yelled at the opposing dugout and shimmied after strikeouts while taking a no-hitter into the seventh inning and being named MVP after the Team USA’s 8-0 win at Dodger Stadium.
“That was for my mom, right there.” Stroman said afterward. “I love pitching in these moments. I love the atmosphere.”
Stroman, whose 12-year-old brother, Jayden, is representing Team USA in the Baseball World Cup in Taiwan, followed with his best season, finishing eighth in the AL Cy Young voting.
Then, he posted a career-worst 5.54 ERA, while injuries limited him to 19 appearances last year.
“I knew people were going to assume that was the Marcus Stroman going forward,” he said. “It bothered me a lot, angered me. ... I knew what I had to do to make it right.”
A month ago, the teenager who printed out the Internet’s ugliest criticisms of him for motivational pre-workout reading — the 28-year-old who takes rookies on shopping sprees after their first win — was called into manager Charlie Montoyo’s office.
Stroman then called his parents in tears, proudly relaying his first All-Star Game selection.
“It’s amazing,” Stroman said. “I can’t take credit for this. It’s a product of everyone around me and everyone who’s helped me.”
His story is embedded in his skin, carved in an ever-growing ink collage across his body. It speaks of his late grandmother, Gloria Major (“my #1 fan”), his father’s badge (No. 1278), the Toronto skyline, his home (NY 631), his MLB debut (May 4, 2014), his maxim (BElieve in YOUrself).
It surfaces with the fist-pumping, the chest-pounding, the stare-downs, the never-ending clash with the old-school.
“My energy is extremely authentic,” Stroman said. “When I’m between those lines, it’s kind of a different savage, a different demon that kind of is out there. I kind of go to a dark place to kind of put myself where I need to be, and I’m very passionate, very emotional.” Now, The Stro’ Show returns home. “When he’s on the mound, he’s an entertainer. He’s a showman,” Snedeker said. “There’s not many guys that you’ll pay money to see them pitch. His exuberance, his joy of pitching, his intensity, that’s what people want to see.”