DETROIT -- The Blue Jays placed reliever Tommy Nance on the 15-day injured list Sunday morning with right forearm discomfort, yet another injury in a season already filled with them.
Taking Nance’s place on the roster will be lefty Adam Macko, who will become the first MLB player born in Slovakia when he makes his debut. The Blue Jays’ No. 21 prospect has been working as a multi-inning reliever with Triple-A Buffalo. Though he was born in Slovakia, Macko has deep Canadian ties as he played high school ball in Alberta and recently pitched well for Team Canada at the World Baseball Classic.
When Macko was 11, his family moved from Slovakia to Ireland. He’d already been playing baseball in Slovakia, but that was the year he fell in love with the sport. It was 2011, and Macko’s favorite player was Detroit’s Justin Verlander, who won the Triple Crown and American League MVP Award that year. Macko was a Tigers fan then, but when his family moved to Canada, he switched allegiances to the Blue Jays.
Here he is, 15 years later, a big leaguer for the first time as the Blue Jays face the Tigers.
“I was thinking about that when I was going to bed last night,” Macko said. “It’s funny how things work out together to be the most perfect scenario I could ever imagine, and being on the Canadian team is definitely a big part of that.”
Macko lit up telling the story of how he got the call. It began with Triple-A manager Casey Candaele, who tends to have some fun with these things. Candaele called Macko and gave him a hard time for taking two burgers from the postgame spread instead of one, telling him that one of the coaches had to go without a postgame meal. Macko felt bad, promising to make up for it the next day, which is when Candaele let him know that he’d better pack his bags and get to Detroit.
Macko spent a day on the taxi squad, but when the time came for him to get the real “call to the big leagues”, he missed a call from pitching coach Pete Walker because he was “panic shopping for collared shirts.” He’d landed in Detroit and realized his wardrobe was a little too casual.
“I needed one for the flight [to New York], but everyone was wearing collared shirts on the bus, too,” Macko said, laughing. “I was the only one in a hoodie. I was just like, ‘This cannot happen again.’”
Down in Triple-A, Macko owned a 4.50 ERA over 18 innings of relief, but the 25-year-old has been considered for a callup multiple times already this season as the Blue Jays deal with injuries. Originally a starter, Macko has built a reputation for growing stronger as the season wears on, which is rare among prospects. But injuries have kept him from touching 100 innings, and he’s since been shortened up into a relief role.
Macko’s fastball sits at 93-95 mph, but his best offerings are his breaking pitches, a strong curveball and slider he’ll need to lean on as out-pitches in the big leagues. Expect to see Macko in a middle-relief role -- and given that the Blue Jays are essentially using bullpen days led by Spencer Miles as their “fifth starter” for the foreseeable future, there’s value to any pitcher capable of throwing multiple innings.
“I can be a little more confident now with my fastball, I think, not having to go through the lineup as many times,” Macko said. “I’ve learned to make myself really efficient warming up. I’ve been getting rid of things I don’t really need that I really thought I needed as a starter, the whole two-hour routine. You don’t get that as a reliever. That’s something I’ve grown into a lot, just weeding out what I don’t need.”
In Nance, the Blue Jays lose a veteran righty who’s quietly been very reliable over the past two seasons, including a 1.99 ERA over 30 appearances in 2025, which flew under the radar but shouldn’t have. In ‘26, Nance has posted a 3.86 ERA with 25 strikeouts over 21 innings.
Nance last pitched in Saturday's win over the Tigers, giving them a clean inning. But prior to that game, manager John Schneider said that the Blue Jays had a couple of relievers who were “banged up.” That’s why Macko was up with the Blue Jays earlier in this series, initially on the taxi squad. But clearly, the Blue Jays didn’t see Nance’s forearm bouncing back the way they needed.