With the Toronto Blue Jays having evened the series in the best-of-seven ALCS at two games apiece, a trend is starting to emerge. The Seattle Mariners won both games in Toronto and the Blue Jays have, so far, won the first two games in Seattle, including Thursday night’s 8-2 victory (box score). Yes, the road team has won every single game.
We’ve seen a road team win all seven games twice before in seven-game series. The 2023 ALCS and the 2019 World Series. You know who was on that 2019 Nationals team that won it all? Max Scherzer.
He took the ball for the Blue Jays in Game 4, hoping to help the Jays avoid falling behind 3-1 in the series. And though vintage Mad Max isn’t really there anymore, the 41-year-old truly turned back the clock Thursday night, enough to gut out the win.
The final line was less impressive than he actually looked for the last several innings, thanks to a stranded runner coming around to score after Scherzer’s departure, though it was still plenty good: 5 ⅔ IP, 3 H, 2 ER.
Again, though, it was more than the numbers. It was Max Freaking Scherzer. Mad Max.
We’ve all seen his facial expressions and mannerisms on the mound long enough to recognize them. He was all but breathing fire on the mound from his first pitch. He paced around the mound after getting swings and misses. There was a lout outburst after an inning-ending strikeout of Eugenio Suárez.
And, of course, there was manager John Schneider having the audacity to go out and check on Mad Max with two outs in the fifth.
“I’ve been waiting for that all year, for Max to yell at me on the mound,” Schneider said after the game. “I think at that point there’s numbers, there’s projections, there’s strategy, and there’s people. So I was trusting people.
“…I thought he was going to kill me. It was great.”
Scherzer would strike the next hitter out. The intensity was on full display.
Scherzer’s numbers, the ones Schneider was talking about, screamed “don’t start me” in this game. Once he gutted through the fifth inning, there was no reason to send him back out for the sixth. Any number cruncher would’ve said get him out of the game. Just watching Scherzer, though, you could feel that maybe, just maybe, they could squeeze another few outs out of him. Maybe it was emotion. Maybe it was yearning for the past with Prime Scherzer. He just gave off that vibe.
The numbers weren’t with Scherzer. But his manager was.
He is 41 years old. He had a 9.00 ERA in his last five starts of the regular season. He hadn’t pitched in a game since Sept. 24 and wasn’t even on the ALDS roster. He wasn’t supposed to do this against a good Mariners offense.
And yet, the longer he stayed on that mound Thursday, the closer he looked to Prime Scherzer.
He got in trouble in the first and a double play got him out of it. He allowed a solo homer to start the second. He had no strikeouts through 2 ⅔. He ended with five strikeouts through 5 ⅔ innings. He only threw his curveball 10 times, but he got 10 swings on it, including six whiffs. On the 20 swings he drew with his four-seam fastball, 12 were foul balls.
Some out there — myself included, admittedly — thought it was a mistake for the Blue Jays to trust Scherzer for many outs in a game that they needed to win. Schneider saw something, though.
“I think everyone in the dugout was kind of waiting for that moment,” Schneider said after the game. “When you sign Max Scherzer, you’re kind of waiting for that moment. So it definitely gave us a little bit of a jolt when he came in. And all that aside, I’m just really — I’m proud of the way Max has handled everything, from getting himself right physically, being left off the roster last series against the Yankees and handling it like a pro, and then coming out and performing like this. So that was big for everyone going forward.”
After 18 seasons in the majors, Scherzer knew how he felt and trusted, like his manager, what he was capable of.
“It was a pitching moment in the game right there. It was just a situation. I was going through it in my head. I understood where the game state was, knew how I wanted to attack, and then all of a sudden I saw Schneids coming out, and I kind of went ‘woah, woah, woah.’ Like, I’m not coming out of this ball game. I feel too good,” Scherzer said after the game.
“So we had a little conversation that basically I wanted to stay in the ball game but just with some other words involved. I just knew I was strong, I knew I wanted the ball, I knew I could get outs in this situation. I just wanted to stay in. I wanted it.”
This wasn’t Babe Ruth allegedly calling his shot or anything that dramatic, but Scherzer did lay it out. He said he needed to find a way to navigate the game. He did exactly that for his 17 outs of work.
None of this is surprising, of course. Scherzer has won three Cy Young awards and two World Series titles. In the regular season, he’s won 221 games and struck out nearly 3,500 hitters. In 143 playoff innings before Game 4, he had 171 strikeouts and seven wins.
In Game 4, he recorded his first postseason win since 2019. You know, that same year that Scherzer and his Nationals won four road games to take the World Series. The Blue Jays, after starting in a 2-0 hole, are halfway there in the 2025 ALCS.
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