McFarland: Newly engaged Macko close to achieving big league dream
Vauxhall Jets alum Adam Macko (Stony Plain, Alta.) made his triple-A debut with the Buffalo Bisons last season. That is just one rung from the majors. Photo: Buffalo Bisons
*This article was originally published on Alberta Dugout Stories on January 28, 2025. You can read it here.
January 30, 2025
By Joe McFarland
Alberta Dugout Stories
A promotion to the big leagues is so close, Adam Macko can almost touch it.
And if everything goes according to plan, the young left-hander would like to do it sometime in 2025.
The highly touted Toronto Blue Jays prospect is coming off a year which saw him play at three different levels, with his final start coming for the triple-A Buffalo Bisons.
He knows he will have to be patient and wait for all the right things to happen.
Maybe – just maybe – he will get the call to his manager’s office with the news that he is being called-up.
“As Spring Training gets closer, I’ve been visualizing and going over that moment more than usual,” Macko told Alberta Dugout Stories: The Podcast. “It would be impossible to put it into words. Anytime I seriously think about it and try to get myself in that moment, I almost tear up as I think about it.”
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Listen to Alberta Dugout Stories interview Adam Macko here.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
He says it’s been a long road with plenty of sacrifice along the way from the many people he has in his corner.
AROUND THE WORLD
Macko’s unique journey to baseball and Alberta is well-documented.
Originally from Slovakia, his family moved to Ireland when he was 12, where his interest in the game took off.
He watched YouTube videos of Justin Verlander and Chris Sale in an attempt to make his game better, while his family continued to move around.
They landed in Stony Plain in 2014 and sent their baseball-loving son to Vauxhall Academy of Baseball for his high school years.
Under the tutelage of Les McTavish and Jim Kotkas, he refined his game and became a seventh-round pick of the Seattle Mariners in 2019, spending three seasons in their farm system before trading him to Toronto in December 2022 as part of the deal that sent Teoscar Hernandez to the west coast.
In his first full season in the Jays’ organization, he went 5-5 with a 4.81 earned run average in 20 starts, striking out 106 batters in 86 innings with the High-A Vancouver Canadians, earning high praise as a top-10 prospect.
LEARNING TO BE PATIENT
The 2024 season was almost the tale of three seasons for Macko, as it began with the double-A New Hampshire Fisher-Cats.
Things were going swimmingly as he posted a 5-4 record with a 4.42 ERA in his first 15 starts for the team.
However, an arm injury sidelined him for most of July and the first half of August.
While Macko was feeling good after about a week off, he said he had to play it slow and steady to make sure he was fully recovered.
“As a competitor, you always want to be out on the field, so that was definitely really hard to feel good after a week and you are still slowly getting into it,” he said.
The 6-foot, 170-pound hurler says it was something he learned and grew from, understanding that he had to constrain himself and not go hard right out of the gates.
He returned to the field with the Low-A Dunedin Blue Jays on Aug. 24, making three starts for the team before coming back to New Hampshire for a Sept. 11 start against Somerset, going four innings in an 8-2 loss.
A LITTLE FINE-TUNING
Macko’s season wasn’t quite done there, as he was promoted a week later to the triple-A Buffalo Bisons to round out the season.
He made one start, allowing three runs on four hits and three walks while striking out three in three innings, as the Bisons fell 10-5 to the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Railriders.
Despite the numbers, Macko says he felt good through most of the outing, with the blemishes coming via a two-run homer in the first and a solo shot in the third.
More than anything it was a learning experience which required some adjustments.
“I heard and felt it in my start that the zone is a little bit smaller,” Macko said. “The top of the zone, where I want to live, has been cut off a little bit, so adjusting to that a little bit.”
He says hitters are also more patient in triple-A, which means he has to be better with his off-speed location to keep them off-balance.
It’s that attention to detail, along with the redevelopment of his fastball velocity following the injury, that has been a focal point for his off-season training regimen.
ENGAGED AND INSPIRED
Another major development came during Macko’s off-season: an engagement to his long-time girlfriend, Victoria.
He says it had been on his mind for a while, especially as she went through the ups and downs of life with a minor league baseball player.
When the opportunity presented itself, he hatched an elaborate plan and popped the big question in a Vancouver park.
Fate, however, wanted to throw one more curveball at the couple, as a power outage and heavy winds almost derailed the entire moment.
Victoria said “yes,” and now they can get into the planning phase, which Macko says he’s happy to do whatever is needed.
“We’re just trying to decide right now where to do it and when to do it,” he said. “I don’t think we’re in a rush.”
Macko says he will be involved in the planning as much as he can, although baseball might have to take precedence when spring training gets underway in mid-February.
He doesn’t have any expectations on where he will be to start the season – they’re more aspirations – as he simply wants to take care of business every time he steps on the bump.
“If there’s a spot for me, there’s a spot for me.”
“I’ve heard that in triple-A, it’s kind of like a waiting room, you just have to wait for the right opportunity and the right spot,” Macko says.
“If you’re killing it and it doesn’t happen, that doesn’t mean that you’re not ready for the big leagues. It’s just not happening right now because there aren’t any spots. You just have to be ready for what that time comes.”
If he is able to make the right time and right place happen as often as possible, Macko’s dream of getting to the big leagues could happen sooner rather than later.