Marcus Stroman is bringing all the ingredients together, and now a bobblehead

After an incredibly successful rookie season with the Toronto Blue Jays, former Patchogue-Medford High School star Marcus Stroman has received an amazing honor.

His own bobblehead doll.

"It's crazy," Stroman said Friday in the Blue Jays' spring training clubhouse. "You know what I mean? Obviously, it's my first full year in the big leagues this year. When they told me about the bobblehead, I was excited. Everybody dreams about having their own bobblehead one day. The fact that it's come this early is pretty special. I'm ecstatic."

Twenty thousand of the plastic mini-Marcuses will be given to fans before the Jays' game against the Astros on June 7.

But Stroman fans in Canada and on Long Island -- and everywhere else they have the Internet -- did not have to wait until June 7 to find out what Stroman's tiny doppelganger looks like.

He's already tweeted a picture. Bobblehead Stroman is blowing a bubble and has tattoos just like the 23-year-old.

"June 7, 2015," Stroman posted Thursday on his verified Twitter account (@MStrooo6). "Swaggiest bobblehead of all time. Bubbles, tattoos, chain, blue glove, etc. Crazy excited!"

Stroman's Twitter followers, all 46.5 thousand of them, are used to getting an inside look at what the righthander is doing and thinking.

Stroman is a prolific poster, using his direct access to fans to give them snippets of the life of an upbeat, positive-thinking, seemingly well-grounded major-league baseball player.

"That's how I am," he said. "My personality is I'm always smiling, always having a good time. I just try to promote that on Twitter.

"It's not me being fake. It's not me promoting anything. It's just me, 100 percent. Sometimes you get the athlete who their Twitter doesn't match their personality. I'm running it. No assistants. No one else is touching my Twitter."

From workout photos to inspirational messages to a photo of a Valentine's Day card he received from his mother (everyone say it -- "Awwwwww"), Stroman has embraced social media, even though he knows Twitter can be rough waters at times.

Just this past week, Mets prospect Noah Syndergaard revealed he temporarily deleted his Twitter app from his phone last season to get away from the chatter. He's not the first athlete to put down the keypad.

But Stroman, who has overcome doubts about his 5-9 stature to make it big in the bigs, said he can handle those who use Internet anonymity to take shots.

"I have thick skin," he said. "I don't worry about people hitting me up, saying mean things. I'm not worried about someone bad-mouthing me or bashing me on Twitter. I would never let that get to me."

Not that there has been a lot to bash him about lately. In his first exposure to the majors, Stroman in 2014 solidified his place as one of baseball's most exciting young starters.

He went 11-6 with a 3.65 ERA in 26 games (20 starts). In 1302/3 innings, he allowed 125 hits, walked 28 and struck out 111.

Stroman finished his first season with a flourish, going 3-1 with a 2.61 ERA in September. He also earned his first (and, if things go well, only) career save in a near-perfect four-inning outing against Baltimore in his final appearance of the season.

Stroman picked up more than experience in his rookie campaign. He picked up a sinking fastball last summer and had started using it as his go-to pitch by season's end.

According to the website brooksbaseball.net, which tracks pitches, Stroman threw the sinker 2.25 percent of the time in May, not at all in June, 10.89 percent in July, 31.19 percent in August and 44.13 percent in September.

The sinker went from nearly nonexistent to Stroman's most-thrown pitch.

"Just found the grip playing around with the grip on my couch," he said. "Started throwing it in [bullpen sessions] and then starting throwing it in games.

"It's changed me as a pitcher completely. I used to be a high-strikeout, low-inning guy. I used to go five, six innings, 100 pitches. Now that pitch is allowing me to go deeper into games. Getting earlier contact, keeping the ball on the ground. Completely changed me as a pitcher. For the better."

Stroman's fastball averaged 93.5 miles per hour in 2014. He also throws a cutter, curve, slider and changeup and used each pitch at least 6 percent of the time in the second half. (Use of the cutter dropped dramatically as he increased the use of his sinker.)

That's six distinct pitches if you're scoring at home -- and five of them measure as above-average, with most analysts agreeing the changeup needs a little work or perhaps should be scrapped.

Earlier this month, Jeff Sullivan posted a study on Fangraphs.com, an advanced stats website, that calculated the best "comps" from righthanded starters for each of Stroman's pitches during the period of 2008-14 using detailed PITCHf/x data.

Stroman's sinker graded out as most similar to Roy Halladay's. Fastball? Johnny Cueto. Curveball? Jose Fernandez. Slider? Chris Archer. Cutter? Josh Beckett.

Sullivan concluded: "Marcus Stroman has got some weapons."

So do the Blue Jays, at least offensively. Toronto added third baseman Josh Donaldson in a trade with the A's and signed free-agent catcher Russell Martin to buttress a potent lineup that already featured Jose Reyes, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion.

Stroman and fellow young righthander Drew Hutchison join veterans R.A. Dickey and Mark Buehrle in a rotation that lacks depth.

So Toronto signed Johan Santana on Thursday to a minor-league deal in hopes he can provide something after missing the last two seasons with shoulder and Achilles troubles.

It's a long shot; Santana last pitched in the majors in 2012 with the Mets. On June 1 that year, he threw the club's first no-hitter.

Stroman was in the stands that night at Citi Field.

How do we know? On Friday, Stroman tweeted about it, of course.

"Johan Santana!" Stroman wrote. "Was there in attendance for his No-Hitter at Citi Field in New York. Witnessed history live! #NoHan"

Three days after the no-hitter, Stroman was drafted 22nd overall by the Blue Jays, beginning a journey that continues to be chronicled 140 characters at a time.

"I enjoy that you can put yourself out there," Stroman said. "When I was growing up, I used to wonder all the time, 'What's Allen Iverson doing on a day-to-day basis, or Michael Jordan?'

"How cool would it be to see those guys tweet what they were doing? You put athletes on such a high pedestal that you don't think that they're doing normal things. But they are and it's cool. I would have loved to see Jordan going to Applebee's to eat.

"I'm just trying to say, 'I'm a normal person. I'm a normal dude.' That's me unfiltered on there. That's me 100 percent."

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers sports media and business and professional sports (you know, games and trades and things). He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since Jan. 1, 2026.