TORONTO — Petr Stribrcky, who grew up in Blansko, Czech Republic, played hockey for one season, but it wasn’t working for him and he was suddenly looking for another sport. His father, also known as Petr, suggested playing a summer game in which players would wear gloves, catch with one hand and throw with the other, something the then 7-year-old found difficult to imagine.
“I didn’t trust him, so he gave me a contract,” Stribrcky recalled.
Baseball immediately caught his attention, and now the 40-year-old is in his eighth year of coaching with the Toronto Blue Jays and is starting a brief stint as third base coach for the Czech Republic in the World Baseball Classic.
For Strivicki, representing his country in international baseball’s premier tournament is the latest highlight in a career that has taken him from playing as a pitcher and corner infielder in the Czech Extraliga to playing professionally around the world.
“I reached the limit of my career, but I always wanted to help other athletes.” He spoke from Japan, where the Czech Republic plays South Korea on Thursday morning. The mantra he learned along the way was, “Be patient and open. There are a lot of people who know more than you, so when you come in, they might have the right idea and they might help you, but be open to what they say and where they’re coming from, learn and listen. Then reach out and start talking. Patience and listening to understand how things work has been very important to me.”
Stribrcky started as a catcher, moved to an infield corner, and then found most of his success as a pitcher over seven seasons in the Extraliga. At this time, he watched VHS tapes of every major league baseball game he could find to find ways to improve.
Greg Maddux’s picnics were his favorite.
“I never pitched hard, but he knew how to set up hitters and was able to use speed and movement,” Stribrcky said. “I tried to emulate that and it worked for me, at least at European level.”
He began coaching at the age of 18 and eventually earned a master’s degree in physical education from Masaryk University in Brno, where he worked through a student exchange program and eventually served as director of the Portuguese Baseball Academy for eight years.
At a European Baseball Coaches Association event in Prague, Stribrcky met Tim Leiper, then the Blue Jays first base coach. He was impressed by how “he loved the game and had a tremendous growth mindset.” Leiper connected him with the club’s player development staff and invited him to serve as a guest coach at fall camp in 2013.
More invitations to fall camp followed, and Stribrcky was drawn to John Schneider, now head coach of the Blue Jays, and John Tamargo, now head coach of Double-A New Hampshire, which was in the lower levels of its player development system at the time.
Schneider remembers their first meeting and jokes that his first thought was: “You don’t spell Petr that way, like where’s the E?” More seriously, he was quickly fascinated by “how curious he was.”
“He wanted to talk to everyone and hear new ideas. Every time I was around someone like that, I thought, ‘Oh, should I do the same to you?’” Schneider continued: “I got to know him and his background a little bit. It’s cool to have different vantage points, and there’s more than one way to do this, whether we take something from him or he takes something from us. So I was drawn to him because of his different background, and I felt like you came here to learn. What can I learn from you?”
At the end of the 2018 season, the Blue Jays offered Stribrcky to apply for one of the open positions on the Dominican Summer League team. They hired him as their hitting coach for the 2019 season, and he has continued to grow since then, serving as a development coach with a rookie-level Florida Complex League team in 2022 and Low-A Dunedin in 2023 and 2024.
In 2025, Stribrcky moved up to Class A Vancouver as a position coach. As he returns to the role again this year, he’s been asked a lot of questions about his backstory.
“Oh, a lot.” He said with a smile. “’How did I get here? What got me here?’ “There are not many players from Europe, especially the Czech Republic, in professional baseball.”
However, Stribrcky cares more about his players than he does about himself, believing that coaches must invest in each person under their supervision to properly individualize the approach to their specific needs.
“I try to be approachable and down-to-earth,” he explained. “I joke around a lot and get to know them, their families, where they come from, their stories…. If you understand the player, you can coach him and get the best out of him.”
Before resuming the process with the next wave of Blue Jays prospects in Vancouver, Stribrcky is taking the same approach to the Czech Republic, where he is grateful for the opportunity the organization has supported.
The Czech Republic is participating in the Classic for the second time and will compete in Group C against hosts Japan, Australia, Chinese Taipei and South Korea. They went 1-3 in 2023 and produced one of the tournament’s most endearing moments, when electrician Ondrej Satoria struck out Shohei Ohtani in the day and lost 10-2 to Japan.
Satoria returns along with former Baltimore Orioles infielder Terrin Vavra and catcher Martin Cervenka, who reached Triple-A in the Orioles and Mets systems.
“Our strength is the team cohesion and the spirit of the players who have been with us for a long time.” said Stribrcky, the only member of the Czech team to be affiliated with a major league organization. “We can play as a team and support each other and pull for each other. And playing against better teams is always difficult for us, so we are ready.”
No matter how the Czech Republic fares, Stribrcky will return with another experience on his unique baseball path that began as a child when he couldn’t even imagine playing the game.
