The Blue Jays’ pitching situation is something of a problem. Eric Lauer and Paxton Schultz have exceeded all reasonable expectations, but with Bowden Francis hurt and ineffective, Spencer Turnbull healthy and even less effective, and a bullpen visibly groaning under the strain that’s been placed on them already in mid June, the big league team needs innings desperately. Max Scherzer might be a big part of the solution, but he’s probably not the whole thing even if he is healthy. With Jake Bloss out, Adam Macko stands as the next guy up on the 40 man (assuming, praying, we’re not doing the Easton Lucas thing again).
Macko got off to a late start this season due to a meniscus tear in spring training. Unfortunately, injuries have been a theme for the Canadian in his career. He missed nearly two months with a forearm strain last year as well, but his 93.1 innings and 20 appearances still both marked career highs. He’s looked a little rusty getting started in Buffalo after cruising through his rehab in Dunedin, but had his best outing so far on Friday. He went 4.0 innings, striking out five against two hits and a hit batter.
His pitch repertoire doesn’t really have a standout, but he has four offerings that are at least competitive by big league standards, all at different speeds and with different movement. Variety will be key if he’s going to stay on top of MLB hitters.
His most used pitch is a four seam fastball. It sits 92-94, occasionally cresting 96. It’s straight-ish, with about 16 inches of induced vertical ride and 6 inches of arm side run. His relatively low release point works with the ride to help the pitch play a bit above its raw speed and movement, as something like MLB average.
He pairs the heater with two distinct breaking balls. The first is a slider that he can vary between 82 and 86mph. The harder ones are a little more cutter-like, while the slower ones get some more depth. It was his best out pitch on Friday, accounting for five swinging strikes. The second is a slow curve at 76mph. He gets terrific spin on it, averaging about 2,900 RPM, and it has huge two plane movement with a foot of horizontal break to his glove side and 15 inches of induced drop. It’s so big, though, that it’s easy to identify out of his hand and hitters tend to lay off. When they do swing, they almost never do anything with it, either whiffing or fouling it back. He needs to get better at dropping it in the zone to steal strikes and force hitters to consider going after it when it might come in low. Baseball America described his feel for locating it last year as strong, so it may just be that he’s still finding it this season. He did get three swinging strikes and a foul on nine curves thrown Friday, so it may be coming around.
Finally, he has a change at 83 with about a foot of drop relative to his fastball and strong arm side fade. It’s probably been his best pitch in previous seasons, but he hasn’t hardly thrown it this year (just 13 through three games in Buffalo) and the feel clearly isn’t quite there right now.
Overall, when he’s on Macko displays fringe average control of average to above average stuff. His delivery has some deception in it that helps everything play a little better than that. If he were durable, this would be the profile of a high K, high walk starter who probably posts a decent ERA but struggles to reach the sixth inning. With his injury concerns he might fit better as a swing man in the long run.
The reason I wanted to profile him now, though, is that as I mentioned above he’s the obvious internal candidate if they need a longer relief or spot starter job filled soon. His stuff as I’ve described it above is roughly in the range it’s been in since he was acquired in the Teoscar Hernandez trade. That’s encouraging given his litany of ailments since then. His first couple of appearances in Buffalo were shaky, but his showing on Friday suggested he’s finding his form. If he locks his change up back in, he’ll have the kind of arsenal that can get big league hitters out right now. If one more domino in the Jays pitching staff falls, he might get the chance to do so.