WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – The final stats tell of a successful first full season in the pros for 20-year-old right-hander Travis Sykora: a 5-3 record, 2.33 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 13.7 strikeout rate and Carolina League Pitcher of the Year honors.
Yet during those 20 starts with the Single-A Fredericksburg Nationals, Sykora was pitching with hip discomfort. Sykora, ranked as the Nats’ No. 2 prospect and baseball’s No. 70 overall per MLB Pipeline, underwent a minor labrum procedure in his hip this offseason.
“Getting my hip fixed and movement patterns cleaned up, it's already paid off more than as if I just worked super hard throughout it,” Sykora said Wednesday prior to the Nationals’ 3-0 loss to the Astros at CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches.
Sykora estimates he hadn’t been able to utilize his hip “the right way” for a few years. Not realizing it was an injury, he found ways to work around it.
“I utilize a lot of internal rotation on my back hip,” Sykora explained. “So when I’d get into that internal rotation, I would feel a little bit of a pinch. What I did is, I just started bowing out my back leg into external rotation – which is the opposite direction – and kind of just pushed off the mound instead of rotating off the mound. So that's kind of why my velocity was down a little bit.”
Sykora, a 2023 third-round Draft pick out of Round Rock (Texas) High School, was able to spend more time with his family than he had in recent years as a result of the offseason procedure. His mother accompanied him on the 10-day trip to Vail, Colo., for the procedure, and she took care of him there post-op; his father helped him on a daily basis with the CPM machine he slept with. Back home, Sykora and his brother fished and went baseball card shopping.
“It was nice because I got to spend more time with my family than I ever have,” Sykora said. “... We were a really close family, but we got even closer. So it was a great offseason in every aspect.”
Sykora followed a rehab schedule of physical therapy exercises three times a day. He has been throwing for the past three months. Sykora has built up to 200-250 feet of long toss, with a target of 300 feet. The plan is to throw off the half mound next week and off the mound the following week.
“Before surgery, when I was dealing with the hip, it was a lot of joint mobilizations and working on my hip to get it to feel somewhat decent,” Sykora said. “But now my warmups, my stretching, it's gone down about 50 percent, so it's a lot easier to get it done throughout the day – and especially throughout the long season.”
Sykora’s goal this season is to win the 2025 Minor League Pitcher of the Year Award. He was a runner-up last year to Cardinals southpaw Quinn Mathews. The heat-throwing Sykora is aiming to limit noncompetitive pitches as he maneuvers his velocities. His fastball can reach triple digits (it averages around 95-98 mph), and his splitter is in the mid-80s.
“It's kind of like a blessing in disguise, because throwing 100 [mph], you can rely on just trying to blow it by everyone on every pitch,” Sykora said. “So it forced me to learn how to pitch like a true pitcher, at lower velocities. Like I said, it's a blessing in disguise because now I can combine what I learned from a pitchability standpoint with my old velocity. I think that's going to be a separator.”
General manager Mike Rizzo previously said Sykora would have been part of Major League camp this year if not for the injury.
“He’s a guy that we’re counting on that can help us in the long haul,” said manager Dave Martinez.