By IAN WILSON
Alberta arms will figure prominently on Team Canada’s pitching staff at the World Baseball Classic.
With a quarter of the 16 pitchers named to the Canadian roster hailing from the province, they’ll play a key role in the success of the squad when the tournament gets underway in March.
Here is a closer look at the pitchers from Wild Rose Country:
MICHAEL SOROKA
He’s done a lot of things in baseball.
Michael Soroka was a first-round draft pick, an Opening Day starter for the Atlanta Braves, an All-Star, a runner-up in National League Rookie of the Year voting, and a winner of the Tip O’Neill Award as the top Canadian baseball player of the year.
The Calgarian has pitched for six Major League Baseball (MLB) seasons with the Braves, Chicago White Sox, Washington Nationals and Chicago Cubs. He’s worked as a starter and out of the bullpen in the postseason.
The one thing that Soroka has not done is represent Canada at the World Baseball Classic (WBC).
That changes this year and the 6-foot-5 righthander cannot wait.
“I think this time around is going to be pretty special to compete with Canada, and I do think we have a really good chance of making it out of that pool,” said Soroka in an interview with Blue Jays Nation.
Canada has never advanced to the second round of the WBC. The team will be competing against Panama, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Colombia for a chance to make history this year.
“I think we’re probably as deep a team as we’ve been, maybe ever,” said the Bishop Carroll High School grad.
“We’ve always had the stars at the top, and it’s always been depth that’s kind of been missing on our roster. It’s difficult because there’s just not that many of us, especially those who can say yes every time it comes around. We go through injuries, we go through ups and downs. I’ve had to say no twice now because it’s just not the right time.”
Added Soroka: “I’m excited to have Denzel Clark in centrefield. I’ve been watching a couple of those catches over and over again. I think he knows how cool those catches are… that one catch could be the greatest catch of all time. There’s definitely a bunch of guys that I actually haven’t played with … so it’ll be fun to kind of be in that dynamic and just bring us all closer together and hopefully put a big storyline together for Canadian baseball.”
Soroka, who signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks as a starting pitcher this offseason, has pitched in 91 career regular season MLB games, 69 of them starts. In his 415-plus innings, the 28-year-old is 20-26 with a 3.85 ERA and 379 strikeouts.
ADAM MACKO
Adam Macko might be one of the more unlikely players to ever put on the uniform for Canada.
He was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, where he somehow discovered the game of baseball through school and pursued it.
His family moved to Ireland, where Macko played his Little League baseball and started studying and emulating YouTube videos of Justin Verlander and David Price.
Vladimir Macko, Adam’s father, took a job in the Edmonton area in 2013, which placed Adam in the Spruce Grove baseball system. From there, he enrolled at the Vauxhall Academy of Baseball in southern Alberta and honed his craft.
“You never hear of players from Slovakia and you never hear of players from Ireland,” said Vauxhall coach Les McTavish.
“But as he continued to mature and grow, he came down for a visit and as soon as you meet Adam, he’s infectious. He has this great confidence about him. Then as soon as he got on the mound it was clear this kid knew what he was doing.”
The Seattle Mariners made Macko a seventh-round pick in the 2019 MLB Draft, before a trade sent him and Erik Swanson to the Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for outfielder Teoscar Hernandez in 2022.
At 25 years of age, Macko has appeared in 89 games over six minor-league seasons. Of those contests, 73 have been starts and 19 have come at the Triple-A level. Overall, the southpaw is 15-26 with a 4.53 ERA and 450 Ks over 355-plus innings.
MATT “TUGBOAT” WILKINSON
Matt Wilkinson is used to representing the red-and-white.
After years of playing for Dawgs Academy and the Okotoks Dawgs summer collegiate squad, the left-handed pitcher is taking his love of those colours to the next level.
Wilkinson – who goes by the nickname “Tugboat” – has been selected to Team Canada’s roster for the 2026 WBC in March.
The White Rock, B.C. native has had a sterling baseball career.
He pitched for the Okotoks Dawgs in the Western Canadian Baseball League (WCBL) from 2019 to 2023. In that time, Wilkinson went 6-3 with five saves in 22 games – half of them starts – and racked up 121 strikeouts through 71-plus innings. He was also a member of three WCBL championship teams in Okotoks.
The 6-foot-1 southpaw was a 10th-round pick of the Cleveland Guardians in the 2023 MLB amateur draft.
In his three minor-league seasons, Wilkinson has a 12-15 record, a 2.98 earned run average (ERA) and 294 strikeouts in 223.2 innings as a starting pitcher. Tugboat helped steer the High-A Lake County Captains to a Midwest League championship title in 2024. That same year, he was honoured by the Canadian Baseball Network (CBN) as the winner of the Wayne Norton Award, which is handed out annually to the top Canadian minor-league pitcher. Keith Law of The Athletic also named Wilkinson as his Pitcher of the Year in the minors.
“He’s just got an absolute killer mentality on the mound. It’s predator versus prey and he is the apex predator,” said Dawgs Academy coach Jeff Duda of Wilkinson in an interview with Kevin Glew of CBN.
“Matt has always had a little chip on his shoulder …. You know PTW – Prove Them Wrong. He’s just got that mindset.”
Joe Sergent, the pitching coach with the summer collegiate Dawgs, also spoke glowingly of Wilkinson in a 2024 interview with Alberta Dugout Stories.
“He’s finally getting to show the world and show all of minor-league baseball what we’ve been seeing up her in Okotoks and in Canada since he was a 12- or 13-year-old,” said Sergent.
“It’s just the way the ball comes out of his hand – we call it the ‘Invisi-ball’ … he’s got a certain run and life on his fastball that you don’t see in regular pitchers. There’s just another gear that comes out of his hand.”
Added Sergent: “Just the sheer optics of it – it’s just another level with that fastball that comes out of his hand … if you could ever see it, if you see it live, it’s like art or poetry. That’s the best way I could describe it.”
This will not be Wilkinson’s first time representing Canada. He struck out 16 batters over five scoreless innings against Mexico at the Little League World Series in 2015.
“That was cool. As a 12-year-old, it was kind of like heaven,” Wilkinson told CBN.
“If you were a baseball fan that was one of your dreams when you were growing up.”
ROB ZASTRYZNY
Zastryzny is the elder statesman of the Alberta group.
Born in Edmonton, the 33-year-old lefthander went to high school in Corpus Christi in Texas before pitching for the University of Missouri.
The 6-foot-3 hurler was a second-round pick of the Chicago Cubs in 2013 and he was a member of the 2016 Cubs team that won the World Series.
He’s also taken the mound for the New York Mets, Los Angeles Angels, Pittsburgh Pirates and, over the last two seasons, with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Zastryzny has suited up in 80 MLB games, logging 89 innings over the years. He’s 6-1 with a 3.84 ERA and 74 strikeouts.
He played for the Canadian national team at the 2019 World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) Premier12 and he represented Canada at the 2023 WBC.
ROSTER NOTES
The coaching staff includes a number of ties to Alberta.
Calgarian Jordan Procyshen, who will work as a bullpen catcher, is an alumni of the Okotoks Dawgs program. He played in the minors for nine years before getting into coaching. Procyshen is now the bench coach for the Triple-A Reno Aces, an affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Third base coach Stubby Clapp, who was recently named part of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame’s 2026 class, suited up with the Edmonton Cracker-Cats in 2005 and 2006. He got his first experience coaching in his second season with the Cracker-Cats. The Windsor, Ontario native has extensive international experience and is now the first base coach of the St. Louis Cardinals.
Team Canada hitting coach Justin Morneau helped the Edmonton Trappers win a Pacific Coast League championship during their 2002 playoff run. At the MLB level, Morneau was a four-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger Award winner, National League batting champ and the 2006 American League MVP. He is a member of both the Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. The Morneau Cup, which will be awarded to the winner of The Road to Okotoks national championship victor, has been named in his honour.
