Jun. 27—Home plate backed up against the fence guarding the family pool, with some trees lining the outfield and the house guarding the left side.
In hindsight, John Kranick isn’t sure why he and younger brothers Connor and Max didn’t flip the field for their backyard Wiffle ball games. Hitting home runs into the pool probably would’ve been more fun. But that was the stadium for friends and family and uncles to play ball when the brothers were growing up.
It’s where Max’s journey in baseball started and it’s where last summer it picked up the steam needed to power him to
St. Louis today, where he’ll make his major league debut.
The Pittsburgh Pirates prospect and Valley View grad is set to take on the Cardinals, but he knows he wouldn’t be up there this soon without a big adjustment made in spring training in Bradenton, Florida, and ironed out in his backyard in Jessup while waiting for baseball to resume amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Last year, I took that time super seriously,” Max said. “I knew I had to if I wanted to stay in the game or continue to move up the ladder. It’s just really reassuring for me. It just shows that if you put in the hard work, put in the time and effort, good things are going to end up
happening.”
At first, the goal was to put himself in a better position to stay healthy. Kranick logged a career high 109 1/3 innings in 2019, but didn’t pitch after July 26 because of an aching shoulder. In spring training before the 2020 season, he met Victor Black, a former big league pitcher who was back in the Pirates organization as a minor league coach.
Because of his own experiences, Black figured he knew why Kranick’s shoulder was barking, so he offered some tips to smooth things out. Mainly, it meant shortening up his arm action.
Kranick didn’t have much time to adjust to it before spring training shut down, so much of the work would have to be done on his own.
That meant constructing a mound that he could roll into the backyard, and setting up home plate where it used be, back against the fence around the pool. John purchased a Rapsodo, a device that gives pitchers instant analytic information, to help with the process and Max went to work.
“It wasn’t instantaneous by any stretch,” their dad John Sr. said. “It actually went backward before we went forward. But, as he kind of started syncing his body up, and with Johnny and the whole analytics … they started to kind of figure things out together. And once they did, it was just like a wow moment. Because he was just airing it out and it was easy.”
It took months, but Max started to see the results he wanted. On June 16, the Rapsodo measured one fastball at 98.7 mph. They worked on a curveball, turning his slider into more of a cutter and refining his changeup, checking in with Black along the way. Most importantly, he felt better.
Max would make enough progress for the Pirates to invite him to their alternate site when it opened up, then they added him to their 40-man roster during the offseason.
“That (adjustment) was something he needed to do in order to simply stay in the game, just because he was always kind of a little bit injury prone, never went through a full season,” John said. “And that helped him with everything. And oh, by the way, he was able to gain about two or three extra miles per hour on a fastball when needed.”
Max might have been the one making the changes, but his journey was also his family’s.
Like any little brother, his dad said Max’s competitive drive came from trying to keep pace with his brothers.
“And Max didn’t really take too well to that,” John Sr. said. “He didn’t like to be shown up by his brothers. That really kind of always kept the edge.”
The three played on the same team twice: once in Little League and once in high school when John was a senior, Connor a junior and Max a lanky freshman. Now, he’s the biggest of the bunch at 6-foot-3, 210 pounds.
“I just knew from, probably the time I was like, I want to say 10 years old, very, very young … that he would be the best one out of the three of us,” Connor said. “Because when it came to playing kids that were anywhere I guess from my age and down, especially like a year older than him and his age and younger than that, there was no competition for him. It was pretty obvious that he was just the more-
talented, better player on the field, each and every time he stepped out there.”
Mom, dad, brothers, girlfriend Emma Henzes and several more friends and relatives will be at Busch Stadium today to see Max achieve his dream.
“It still doesn’t kind of feel real to me,” said John. “Just because I’ve been around the game now — obviously, with the Pirates, I got to see him as a brother and then see him in a professional setting as well. I just watched him there, see how he simply changed from year to year. It’s incredible to see, but I’ll probably cry that day. That’ll be the day where we kind of put everything together like, ‘Wow, this was worth it.’ “
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