Pitching prospect Macko joins Blue Jays with high hopes – and high strikeout rates
As the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners accomplished the mid-November commerce that noticed Teoscar Hernandez swap groups with Erik Swanson and Adam Macko, the younger left-handed pitcher was asleep.
A cellphone name from Andy McKay, the Mariners’ senior director of participant improvement, woke Macko unexpectedly. Though he’d by no means been traded earlier than, the just lately turned 22-year-old had a hunch he is perhaps on the transfer when he noticed McKay’s identify on his cellphone.
“I don’t think I’ve ever received a call from him, so I had a feeling that it meant I might have been traded,” Macko mentioned over Zoom. “At that time, I used to be unhappy to be leaving the Mariners. They’re a fantastic group the place I’ve made so many reminiscences and constructed so many relationships.
“It was my first trade, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.”
What got here subsequent for the 6’0″ lefty was a whirlwind couple of months.
He needed to re-schedule his first-ever trip so he might full his physicals on the Blue Jays’ spring coaching facility in Dunedin, Fla., travelling there from his low season residence in Vancouver.
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Of course, travelling and shifting aren’t precisely new to the Slovakian-born pitcher.
Macko has taken an uncommon path to the skilled ranks, beginning in a rustic “where baseball is unheard of,” as he put it.
After shifting from Slovakia to Ireland at 11 after which to Stony Plain, Alta., simply over a 12 months later, he settled in at southern Alberta’s Vauxhall Academy of Baseball, the place he performed till Seattle chosen him within the seventh spherical of the 2019 MLB Draft.
During his early life in baseball, YouTube gave him his introduction to pitching. Macko would watch movies of MLB stars Justin Verlander and David Price, emulating two of the sport’s greatest.
His admiration for Price converged along with his rooting pursuits when the Cy Young winner was traded to the Blue Jays throughout the summer season of 2015.
“Once I got to Canada, obviously the team to support was the Blue Jays, so they were the first team I would watch religiously and support, so I’m beyond excited to be a Blue Jay,” Macko mentioned. “Once Price got traded to Toronto, it was awesome. I loved watching them play. I remember watching the Jose Bautista bat flip … it was probably the most exciting baseball moment that I’ve watched.”
Fast ahead seven years, and Macko now finds himself because the eighth-best prospect within the Blue Jays farm system, per MLB Pipeline.
His four-pitch arsenal incorporates a fastball that sits round 93 m.p.h. and has topped out at 97 together with a curveball, slider and change-up.
He joins the Blue Jays group with 95 profession minor league innings below his belt, 38.1 of which got here in 2022 for the Everett AquaSox, the Mariners’ high-A affiliate.
While battling an elbow pressure and meniscus damage, Macko posted a 3.99 ERA with the AquaSox, hanging out 35.9 per cent of the hitters he confronted.
As he continues to enhance on the mound, balancing his work ethic with caring for his physique has change into one among Macko’s prime priorities.
“I’ve never been afraid of working hard, but I understand now that I’ve always been overworking myself and never letting [my body] rest,” he mentioned. “I at all times needed to push myself to get higher as a result of there’s at all times another person working exhausting.
“I’m starting to understand that recovery is a good thing. I’ve learned that it’s really about the quality of the reps that I’m doing rather than the quantity.”
Vauxhall’s head coach, Les McTavish, noticed that work ethic in Macko from an early age.
“He’s obsessed with being great. He would wake up at six in the morning in high school to go to the gym and work on his core and go through his stretching routine,” McTavish mentioned in a Zoom interview. “There are very few people that I’ve ever met that are like that.”
That drive to be nice was evident when Macko — in grade 10 on the time — advised Vauxhall’s power coach, Jeff Krushell, that his objective is to make the Hall of Fame.
“All of us as a staff remember that because he just had a confidence in him,” McTavish mentioned. “That’s the mentality he had as a 15-year-old. He wants to be great at everything he does. He’s extremely driven in the sense that he tries to turn over every rock to figure out how to get better, and he’s been like that from a young age.”
Now transitioning to a brand new group, Macko’s targets aren’t altering — for 2023 or past.
“This off-season, I’m trying to build up some more strength to throw harder and to protect my elbow, shoulder and whole body to withstand the whole season,” he mentioned. “Long time period, my final objective is to make the Hall of Fame, however I don’t suppose it’d be price being within the corridor if I didn’t win a few World Series.
“I think it’d be awesome to do that with the Blue Jays. To bring a championship back to not only Toronto but to all of Canada would be so special.”
