January 14, 2026
By Kevin Glew
Cooperstowners in Canada
It seemed fitting for James Paxton to be inducted onto Baseball Canada’s Wall of Excellence at an awards banquet held at the Rogers Centre on Saturday night.
After all, it was in that building 2,804 days earlier that he made history when he tossed a no-hitter for the Seattle Mariners against the Toronto Blue Jays to become the only Canadian to throw a major league no-hitter in a Canadian ballpark.
It also seemed fitting that it was at the Rogers Centre that the Ladner, B.C., native confirmed that he’s coming out of retirement to pitch for Canada at the World Baseball Classic in March.
“I’m going to dust off the spikes,” said Paxton at the press conference prior to the banquet. “They reached out and asked me if I was interested and I worked out the logistics with my family and was able to make it work. So, I’ve been playing catch, knocking the rust off and it feels pretty good. I’m going to start throwing bullpens in a couple of weeks and build myself up. I’m going to come out of the bullpen.”
Paxton ended his 11-season big league career in 2024, but national teams director Greg Hamilton kept the 6-foot-4 southpaw in mind when he was formulating Canada’s 2026 WBC roster.
“He was a big arm with a lot of experience and a lot of accomplishments and not that far out [from his retirement],” said Hamilton. “So, when Ernie [Whitt] and I were talking a little over a year ago, I just started kicking tires [on Paxton] to see where his mind was and see whether he would have an interest in doing it.”
Hamilton reiterated that Paxton will be used as a reliever.
“We’re not asking him to go nine,” said Hamilton. “We’re hoping that the energy and the intensity of the environment will get him a little spike where we would be able to use him in quick spurts.”
This will be Paxton’s first WBC. There were three WBC tournaments during his big league career, but he was unable to pitch in them.
“I think every time there was one, I was either coming off an injury or I was injured,” said Paxton. “I’m really excited to finally get an opportunity to pitch for Canada again.”
Junior National Team grad
He last toed the rubber for Canada as a member of the Junior National Team in 2006.
“I think that was the highest level of competition that I had faced at that point,” said Paxton. “You learn what it’s like to feel that kind of pressure, pitching for your country, and the intensity of the games was really a great experience.”
Hamilton remembers seeing the potential in a 16-year-old Paxton with the North Delta Blue Jays.
“The arm really worked. The ball came out nice and clean,” recalled Hamilton of the young Paxton. “He was left-handed and you could look at the frame and envision more growth in that frame because there was length in it and the make-up was great . . . He was one of those guys that if you said he would play in the big leagues someday, you wouldn’t be surprised. He looked the part.”
Becomes a Wildcat
After impressing with the Junior National Team, Paxton was recruited by the University of Kentucky and the person to show him around the campus was fellow Canuck southpaw Andrew Albers (North Battleford, Sask.), who had been a Wildcat since 2005.
Albers’ campus tour must have been a good one; Paxton committed to Kentucky and began his college career in 2007.
“James wasn’t very strong coming out of high school. He hadn’t lifted much, but he worked his tail off there and got a lot stronger and got a lot more athletic and a lot more physical,” recalled Albers.
And as Paxton got stronger, his velocity increased.
“When he came in, he was probably 88 to 90 for the most part, maybe touching 92, but I think by the time he left, he was 95, 97 and touching 98, so that’s a pretty incredible transformation and, again, a testament to the hard work he put in.”
In his first season with Kentucky, Paxton was used as a reliever before he was moved to the starting rotation in his sophomore campaign. By his junior year, he was the team’s Friday night starter and would finish third in the NCAA with 13.22 strikeouts per nine innings.
Drafted twice
That was enough to convince the Toronto Blue Jays to select him 37th overall in the 2009 MLB draft. But the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement and Paxton reentered the draft the following year and was chosen in the fourth round by the Mariners.
He’d pitch for parts of three seasons in the minors prior to making his major league debut on September 7, 2013. Over the next three seasons, he was effective with the Mariners when healthy, but it wasn’t until 2016 that he made 20 starts for them.
Outfielder Michael Saunders (Victoria, B.C.) was Paxton’s Mariners teammate for the lefty’s first two seasons.
“He was a phenomenal teammate and a phenomenal person and an unbelievable talent,” recalled Saunders. “I was blown away by him. It seemed like one minute he was this rookie and the next minute he was our No. 2 behind Felix Hernandez. And he had stuff that could easily play as a No. 1.”
Breakout season
Paxton enjoyed a breakout season in 2017 when he went 12-5 with a 2.98 ERA in 24 starts. Ironically, when Paxton was sidelined with a strained left pectoral muscle that August, the Mariners acquired Albers from the Atlanta Braves to replace him in the rotation.
“It was a neat full circle moment,” said Albers, who went 5-1 with a 3.51 ERA in nine appearances for the M’s that year.
It was also that season that Mariners’ bench coach Tim Bogar gave Paxton his nickname.
“He [Bogar] told me one time, ‘Hey, you need a nickname,’ And I was like, ‘OK, come up with one.’ So, he kept on coming up to me with nicknames and then one day, he walked up to me and said, ‘I’ve got it — Big Maple,” shared Paxton. “Then he told our manager Scott Servais and then Servais said it in a post-game media conference and it kind of caught on fire and I’ve been Big Maple ever since.”
No-hitter on Canadian soil
Paxton put together another outstanding season in 2018. On May 2 that year, he fanned 16 Oakland A’s batters to set a record for most strikeouts in a major league game by a Canadian pitcher.
Six days later, he would make Canadian baseball history by throwing a no-hitter against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.
“Early on in that game, I didn’t feel great. I was walking a few guys. I didn’t realize that I hadn’t given up a hit until the fourth or fifth inning,” recalled Paxton.
He started thinking seriously about a no-hitter in the seventh inning.
“To end the seventh inning, Kyle Seager made a diving play at third base to save the no-hitter,” said Paxton. “And he ran past me on the way back to the dugout and said, ‘You’re welcome,’ And at that point, I was like, ‘OK, now I’ve got to get this done. I’ve got to finish this thing off.’”
Paxton remembers a conversation with his catcher Mike Zunino before the bottom of the ninth.
“Zunino said, ‘Hey, best stuff right here.’ And I threw all fastballs in that last inning. I gave it everything I had. I think I sat 99-100. I thought to myself, ‘If I’m going to get beat, I’m going to get beat on my best pitch,’ It was just pedal to the metal and I just threw as hard as I could the entire inning and it worked out,” recalled Paxton.
In the late innings, the Rogers Centre fans were cheering him on and after an on-field postgame interview, they gave him another rousing ovation. He responded by holding up his right arm that has a Maple Leaf tattoo on it.
“I was just showing my appreciation for them by pointing at the maple leaf on my arm. That was my way of saying thanks for the support,” said Paxton.
Paxton finished that season with a career-high 208 strikeouts and was rewarded with the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame’s Tip O’Neill Award, as the best Canuck player.
Calm and cool
On top of his high 90s fastball and nasty curveball, Paxton was known for his calm demeanor throughout his career.
How calm?
Before his start against the Minnesota Twins on April 5, 2018, a bald eagle mistakenly landed on him and he barely flinched.
“I’ve always been kind of a little stoic like that, but I worked with Don Carman from the Boras Corporation for a long time on my mental side of the game and he helped me tremendously and it made a big impact on my career,” said Paxton.
Following that season, he was traded to the New York Yankees, where his calmness would be tested. But he passed with flying colours. In 2019, He went 10-0 in the final two months of the regular season. Then, with the Yankees down 3-1 in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series to the Houston Astros, Paxton got the start in Game 5 against Justin Verlander. The Canadian excelled, allowing just one run in six innings in the Yankees’ 4-1 victory to keep their season alive.
“That Houston team was a great team,” said Paxton. “It took almost everything I had.”
After an injury shortened 2020 with the Yankees, Paxton returned to the Mariners, where he made just one start before undergoing Tommy John surgery.
He missed the 2022 season before completing his career with the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers in 2023 and 2024.
In all, in parts of 11 major league seasons, Paxton finished with a 73-41 record and a 3.77 ERA in 177 starts.
According to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, he ranks in the top 10 among Canadian big-league pitchers in several statistical categories, including sixth in strikeouts (1,005), seventh in wins (73), eighth in starts (177) and 10th in WAR (13.9).
Settled in Seattle
These days, Paxton lives in the Seattle area and is raising his two young children with his wife, Katie. He is finishing his business degree, but his eventual goal is to obtain his master’s in Sports Psychology.
He has also started a company with a friend called Athlete Complete. As its name suggests, it focuses on helping athletes with everything they need to succeed.
Paxton will also hopefully find time in his busy life to savour his Baseball Canada Wall of Excellence honour – one that made him the third left-handed pitcher to be inducted after fellow B.C. natives Jeff Francis (North Delta, B.C., 2016) and Adam Loewen (Surrey, B.C., 2023).
“To have gone and played Major League Baseball and had some success and to be recognized like this is just really special,” said Paxton.
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