Michael Stefanic had a job in a law office — now he's in Blue Jays camp

DUNEDIN, Fla. — The odds, Michael Stefanic grants, were next to impossible.

It was 2018, and although over 1,200 players were selected through 40 rounds of that year’s MLB draft, Stefanic wasn’t one of them. Hundreds more signed as undrafted free agents to fill out affiliate rosters in the weeks following. He wasn’t one of them either.

So, in between rounds of interviews at the Santa Barbara law firm where he was set to begin his post-baseball life as a legal assistant, Stefanic took an iPad to his old high school field in Boise, Idaho and filmed himself fielding grounders around the infield, turning double plays at second, and taking batting practice against his former high school coach.

Then he filmed a few highlight clips off a television from his four-year NAIA career as a second baseman with Westmont College — a small liberal arts school in the hills above Montecito, Calif. — and spliced it all together into a three-minute, 32-second video that could’ve earned him a B-minus in junior high AV class:

Stefanic sent that video to hundreds of front office employees with all 30 MLB clubs — any email address he could get his hands on. A few responded. None of them included contract offers. His desperate, full-court lob denied, Stefanic accepted both reality and the legal assistant job, following his attorney father’s footsteps into the real world. An economics and business major, he figured he’d become a baseball agent someday.

But late that July, the Los Angeles Angels suffered a spate of injuries at the lowest levels of their organization and needed warm bodies to help their rookieball teams get to the end of the season. Someone in L.A.’s player development department stumbled upon Stefanic’s video in their email and gave him a call. How quickly can you get to Arizona? We’re prepared to offer you a minor-league contract with a signing bonus of $0.

Stefanic drove seven hours to Tempe the next morning. He hadn’t held a bat in over two months; the Angels gave him a week to get up to speed so he wouldn’t get hurt. Swinging at the first pitch he saw in the first plate appearance of his first professional game, Stefanic shot a line-drive single the opposite way.

Seven years later, after continuing to hit and hit and hit his way up the Angels organization before they had no choice but to promote him to the majors in 2022, the 29-year-old infielder is trying to extend his improbable career with the Blue Jays, which he joined on a minor-league deal last November after the Angels designated him for assignment.

Stefanic will almost certainly begin his season with triple-A Buffalo and need openings to materialize above him on Toronto’s crowded infield depth chart to get to Rogers Centre this summer. But he already has 90 MLB games under his belt, which is 90 more than even he believed he’d play when he filmed that highlight video in 2018. So, who’s to say he can’t beat the odds again?

“I think it's just a testament to me not taking no for an answer and trusting my abilities — knowing that not only am I good enough to compete, I'm good enough to make it to the top and stay there,” the bearded Stefanic says, standing at his locker in the Blue Jays spring training clubhouse. “That's my goal. I want to help the Jays win a lot of ballgames this year. And whatever that means for me is what I'm going to do.”

One thing no one can ever deny Stefanic is his ability to hit the ball. His 3.7 per cent swinging strike rate since his first full season in 2019 is the seventh lowest among nearly 5,000 qualified minor-leaguers over that span. And many of the names above and around him on that list — Steven Kwan, Nick Madrigal, David Fletcher, Travis Jankowski, Isaac Peredes — became big-league regulars.

Lowest swinging strike rate among qualified minor-leaguers, 2019-2024

Ernie Clement has been Toronto’s organizational contact king for a couple years now, running an 87.9 per cent contact rate that ranks among MLB’s top-10 hitters. Over 72 games at triple-A prior to his 2023 call-up, Clement’s contact rate was as high as 90 per cent.

Stefanic? His triple-A contact rate over substantial samples was 92.1 per cent last season, and 94.1 per cent during both 2022 and 2023. He has some of the best hand-eye coordination and bat-to-ball skill in affiliated baseball. He can’t tell you why that is. It’s been this way his entire life. 

“It’s the dangedest thing,” he says. “Whenever I swing, I usually hit the ball.”

Of course, a curse accompanies that gift. Unless your swing decisions are so elite that you never offer at pitcher’s pitches along the edges of the zone or just outside of it, you don’t want to hit everything you offer at. That’s how you end up with weak contact in the air or on the ground, which are near automatic outs at baseball’s highest level. The 58.4 per-cent groundball rate Stefanic produced in the majors in 2024 isn’t going to lead to good results.

This first-pitch groundout from his Blue Jays debut on Saturday is a good example of the curse. As Stefanic realized he was offering at a sweeper cutting off the plate, he tried to hold back his swing. But his swing accuracy was so good that the ball bounced off his barrel:

In that 0-0 count, Stefanic wants to not even start his swing. He wants to recognize that even if that pitch catches the outer third, it isn’t one he can do damage with anyway. He wants to be comfortable taking the first-pitch strike and continuing to look for something middle-in he can drive.

Now here’s the gift. On Tuesday, Stefanic worked his way deep into an at-bat and got an inside pitch he could turn on. He rifled it at 98-mph over 300-feet into the left field corner where it fell only inches foul. Back in the box with a 2-2 count, Stefanic went into contact mode and slowed his swing to clip a slider tailing down beneath the zone:

A run scored and the Blue Jays had a lead. It’s the same process the Blue Jays have instilled in Clement over the last two years. Commit to a plan and look for a specific pitch early in plate appearances, taking your A-swing if you get it. Be OK swinging through it if you miss. Because with two strikes you can rely on your elite hand-eye to make contact and put a ball in play somewhere, going back to what you do best.

Stefanic isn’t trying to convince anyone he could be a 20-homer hitter. His 87.3-mph average exit velocity and 106-mph maximum at triple-A last season would both be well below-average for a major-leaguer. But if he can refine his swing decisions while utilizing enough depth in his bat path to impact the ball at preferrable angles, Stefanic can more often produce the line drives that will allow him to make the most of his uncanny contact ability.

“My focus is just to set my sights a little higher and try to hit the ball through the wall,” Stefanic says. “Knowing what I’m looking for, swinging at strikes, doing my best to lay off those borderline pitches and eliminating chase is huge for me.”

Clement learned similar lessons during his early days with the Blue Jays after signing with the club as a minor-league free agent in spring, 2023. His triple-A groundball rates were up over 40 per cent before he joined Toronto, made a series of bat path adjustments, and exchanged a bunch of those grounders for line drives. Now he’s positioned to be a fixture in the Blue Jays 2025 lineup.

For Stefanic to replicate that path will be a challenge. But not as much of one as the path he already travelled to the majors. Last week, Clement went golfing with Stefanic to get to know him and witnessed his elite coordination firsthand. Clement told his new teammate one of the most critical ways he proved himself with the Blue Jays was an eagerness to make the long spring training road trips to face the top pitchers from other organizations who typically don’t travel to Dunedin.

“Him and I are pretty similar,” Clement says. “I was like, ‘Dude, I was in the exact same spot you were two years ago, even last year — being the odd man out.’ He’s obviously a pretty good story and a hell of a ballplayer, too. And at some point we're going to need guys like that to come up and help us. You just have to keep working and make the most of any opportunity you get.”

No one could ever accuse Stefanic of doing anything less. After the Angels signed him in 2018 off that three-minute highlight video, Stefanic got into only 14 rookieball games before the end of the minor-league season. But he performed so well — 13 hits and four walks in 43 trips to the plate — that the club brought him back for another go in 2019. And after OPS’ing .831 through early May against A-ball pitching, the organization bumped him up to high-A and asked him to begin playing shortstop regularly.

On the other side of the COVID season, Stefanic spent only three weeks at double-A (he put up 30 hits in 21 games) before forcing his way to triple-A where his .913 OPS and 130 wRC+ ranked within the top-15 triple-A hitters across the sport. Suddenly, a legal assistant three years prior was appearing on Angels top-prospect lists throughout the industry. Only one minor-leaguer across all of affiliated ball — current Twins third baseman Jose Miranda — had more hits than Stefanic’s 165 that season.

Similar story in 2022 as Stefanic entered early July hitting .314/.402/.387 with twice as many walks (26) as strikeouts (13) before an aspiration that once seemed hopeless was achieved and he was called up to the majors. Pinch-hitting in the ninth inning two days later, Stefanic inside-outted a Tanner Scott slider the opposite way for his first big-league knock.

He spent the next two-and-a-half years riding the optionable carousel between triple-A and MLB, posting a 133 wRC+ over 224 minor-league contests and a 72 wRC+ across 90 games in the majors. A persistent left quadriceps issue made life difficult in 2024, but to this day Stefanic won’t accept it as rational for why he scuffled over his final 30 games with the Angels and was removed from the 40-man roster following the season.

“I just didn't play very well when I got my opportunities,” says Stefanic, who elected minor-league free agency when he was waived in October. “I hit a lot of groundballs right at guys. And with how good these defenders are at the big-league level, that just doesn't play.”

Certainly, entering free agency as a 28-year-old contact hitter who 30 teams believed wasn’t a pro ballplayer in the first place was an anxious feeling. But only days into the off-season Stefanic’s agent heard from multiple teams interested in signing him to minor-league deals. The Angels were naturally one of them. But the opportunity to experience something new was enticing, and by the end of November he was a Blue Jay. 

“I really liked their team last year. It seemed like they had a good core group of guys,” he says. “My goal is to get back to the big leagues with the Jays and help this ballclub win. It’s an exciting team and an exciting city to come to. I’m just excited to get started.”

Currently on the outside looking in of Toronto’s big-league roster picture — just as Clement was at this point in 2023 — Stefanic will have plenty of opportunities to play this spring; to make the multiple-hour bus rides to Port Charlotte, Fort Myers, Jupiter. And he’ll likely start the season riding triple-A busses, too. But even that seemed unachievable seven years ago when he was setting up an iPad at his old high school field. And all Stefanic has ever needed was a chance.

“In my heart, I really feel like there's a place in the game for people like me,” he says. “I'm never going to be a guy that hits 20, 30 homers. And when I try to hit homers, I'm not very good. But I can be the guy who gets on base and turns those solo shots into two-run and three-run homers. So, I'm going to continue to play my game and try to be the best version of myself. That's what got me to the big leagues. And I'm going to stick with my plan.”