It was a calm June night in Durham, N.C., when Marcus Stroman parked outside the rehab facility that served as his second home for the entire summer and strode in with a backpack over his shoulder and a pair of water bottles in his right hand. While he got to work, running through drills and exercises designed to help strengthen the surgically repaired ACL in his left knee, his best friend and roommate, Ryan Bahnson, sat on a shoulder press machine providing live updates on what would turn out to be the Blue Jays’ second straight loss to the Mets. Catching his breath between reps, Stroman bemoaned the fact that not only was his team losing, but he wasn’t there to help them win. He wanted to play so badly; wanted to be with the teammates he calls his brothers. He obsessed over it.

This wasn’t an exceptional night for Stroman during the summer of 2015. He had dozens just like it, spent simultaneously working and wishing, his mind stubbornly set on a single, all-consuming goal: to get healthy and pitch for his team.

There was never any doubt in his mind that it would happen, that he could work through anything. There was plenty of disbelief among fans, media and even Blue Jays management, though. They doubted that Stroman could rehabilitate his blown-out knee in time to contribute to a Blue Jays team that, by mid-August, was steamrolling its way toward its first division title in as many years as there are Bond films.

And that was fine by him. He fed off the doubt, just like he had his entire life. When they told him in high school he was too short to pitch and would never make it at the next level, he pushed harder, going to Duke and becoming the ace of the university’s pitching staff. When they told him his only future in the majors was as a reliever and that, at five-foot-eight, he couldn’t start for a full season, he shook it off and threw 13 quality outings (six innings or more; three runs or less) in 20 first-year starts.

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So, when they told him his 2015 season was done before it even began, he used it as fuel to get out of bed every morning on five hours’ sleep so he could go to rehab, plow through a full day of university classes and then rehab some more. His antidote to others’ doubts has always been sheer willpower.

And the crazy thing about Marcus Stroman is he’s only started 24 games in the majors. He has just 157.2 innings pitched over the past two years. That’s nothing—less than a full year’s work for a typical major-league starter. He’s shown mere bursts of what he could one day be, yet is there any pitcher on the Blue Jays you have more confidence in? Is there any other guy you’d want to take the mound for a must-win? Stroman is undoubtedly the Toronto Blue Jays’ best pitcher. Four exceptional September starts, plus three more in the playoffs—in a year he wasn’t even supposed to pitch—cemented that.

He’s proved he can rehab faster, pitch better and capture the hearts of a fan base more completely than any homegrown Blue Jays pitcher ever before. He’s proved an awful lot in a very short time. And can you even imagine what he’ll show us next?