Interview with Jakob Syrén

For the website Twinsbaseball.nl, I interviewed Swedish pitcher Jakob Syrén. Jakob is one of the relievers of De Glaskoning Twins of the Dutch hoofdklasse. I translated the interview into English so you can read it as well.

According to Jakob, baseball is a micro sport in Sweden. About 650 people are playing the sport so you can say that Sweden is doing well internationally as it always manages to stay in the A group of the European championship. Especially because it is very hard to find opponents of a good level to play against. Even though Sweden cannot be compared with countries like Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, the Swedish national team is a close group of players that practices once a month in the offseason to stay in shape. There are quite some Swedish players that play abroad, mainly at junior colleges in the USA, like Jakob used to do, but also in Germany. Those in Germany are doing pretty well according to Jakob.

Thanks to his father, Jakob got in touch with baseball. His father used to play and coach at the former Swedish powerhouse Leksand. As soon as Jakob could walk, he hit balls from tees and threw balls around in the garden. In the town of Leksand, baseball is one of the biggest sports next to hockey. During winter kids play hockey and during summer they switch to baseball. Unfortunately, both sports have lost ground to soccer.

When Jakob was six or seven years old, he started to play baseball with Leksand as he joined the club during tournaments throughout Sweden. Jakob spent time on the field of Leksand almost every day together with his brother as he lived about three hundred yards away from the club. As mentioned before, Leksand used to be a powerhouse in Swedish baseball but they have lost ground a bit but the club is working on a comeback. At the age of nineteen, Jakob jumped ships. He left Leksand and joined the neighboring Rättvik Butchers because Leksand did not have a pitching coach at the time and Rättvik had two (one former minor leaguer). Since both towns are separated by only twenty kilometers, they are rivals in almost everything so his step must have hurt Leksand a lot.
Jakob has a big heart for both clubs.

Shortly after he joined the Rättvik Butchers, Jakob went to the USA to play for the San Joaquin Delta College, a junior college in Stockton, California. Stockton is situated about eighty kilometers East from Oakland/ San Francisco and about fifty kilometers Southeast from the Californian capital Sacramento. As a baseball fan, Jakob has spent several nights at the games of the local minor league club, the Stockton Ports.

In 2016, Jakob had to deal with a big blow as he could not join the Swedish national team during the European Championship as he underwent Tommy John surgery.

Before he joined De Glaskoning Twins, the highest level Jakob played at, was with the 2014 European Championship with the Swedish national team. Thanks to his former high school coach, Tony Klarberg, Jakob got in touch with Twins. As Klarberg asked him if he wanted to play in the Netherlands, Jakob got in touch with manager Kevin Knollenburg. After they spoke with each other for a couple of weeks, Jakob went to the Netherlands for a tryout. Knollenburg was so impressed that he signed Jakob for the 2018 season.

Because De Glaskoning Twins is focusing on the remainder of the regular season in an attempt to reach the playoffs, there haven’t been any talks about an eventual return to Oosterhout next year. But Jakob is enjoying his stay with De Glaskoning Twins a lot, so as far as he is concerned, he will come back next year. So far, Jakob is more than happy with his performance. With an ERA of just above 3.00 he has every reason to be happy.

To our question how Jakob deals with pressure, he answered: “When I was younger, I put a lot of pressure on myself. As a result, I struggled with my control. Since my Tommy John surgery, I am happy that I can play and I try to have fun as much as possible. I believe in the “baseball gods” and the motto “Play the game as it is meant to be played and good things will happen.””

Jakob thinks his biggest performance was his three-inning outing during game two of the Swedish championship series between Stockholm and Leksand, a few years ago. He took the mound in the seventh inning and recorded a nine out save.

We’d like to thank Jakob for the time he has taken to answer our questions and we wish him lots of success for the rest of the season.