With the Return of Mad Max Scherzer, the Blue Jays Even the ALCS

You could be forgiven for having thought that Max Scherzer had reached the end of the line. For the second season in a row, the three-time Cy Young winner and future Hall of Famer missed significant time due to injuries, and when he was available, he struggled like never before. The 41-year-old righty put up the majors’ highest ERA in the first inning (12.96), had issues with tipping pitches, and after allowing 25 runs in his final 25 innings, missed the cut for the Division Series roster. Yet on Thursday, with the Blue Jays trailing the Mariners two games to one in the ALCS, Scherzer turned back the clock, holding Seattle to just two runs over 5 2/3 innings while an aggressive offense chased Mariners starter Luis Castillo in the third inning. With Andrés Giménez and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. both homering for the second straight night, the Blue Jays won 8-2 to even the series.

Scherzer, who had last pitched in a game on September 24, added to the Mad Max lore, displaying his legendarily competitive fire in the fifth inning. With two outs, a runner on first base and Toronto leading 5-1, manager John Schneider went to the mound to talk to Scherzer, who growled and chased the skipper away, struck out Randy Arozarena on a curveball in the dirt, then retired two batters in the sixth before finally getting the hook.

“I’ve been waiting for that all year, for Max to yell at me on the mound,” said Schneider afterwards. “It was awesome, I thought he was going to kill me.”

The Blue Jays have waited all year for this version of Scherzer to show up. After being limited to nine starts last season while recovering from surgery to repair a herniated disc and then being sidelined by shoulder fatigue and a left hamstring strain, Scherzer made just 17 starts in 2025. He missed nearly three full months in the first half of the season due to inflammation in his right thumb, didn’t get his ERA below 4.00 until his 10th start (though that proved temporary) and never got his FIP below 4.50. He did enjoy a stretch of five straight quality starts from July 27 to August 19, a span during which he faced the Tigers, Dodgers, and Cubs, but he scuffled thereafter. Over his final 25 innings, he served up eight homers, and finished with career worsts in both ERA (5.19) and FIP (4.99).

Hence the Blue Jays’ decision to leave Scherzer off their roster and instead roll with a bullpen game against the Yankees in Game 4 of the Division Series following starts by Kevin Gausman, Trey Yesavage, and Shane Bieber. The gambit worked, as eight relievers (including opener Louis Varland) held the Yankees to two runs and closed out the series. Scherzer stayed engaged in the lead up to the League Championship Series, working on getting his body healthy and throwing a simulated game.

After Castillo retired the Blue Jays on seven pitches in the top of the first, Scherzer wobbled in the bottom of the frame. After he retired Arozarena on a grounder on his second pitch, he got ahead of Cal Raleigh 0-2, then missed on four pitches in a row down and in, and walked him. He then walked Julio Rodríguez on four straight pitches, all low and away, and when he missed low with a 95.3-mph four-seamer to Jorge Polanco, his streak reached nine straight balls. For all of Scherzer’s struggles in the first inning this year — which included batters hitting .407/.455/.753 against him in that frame — he hadn’t walked two in the frame all season, so this was something different.

“I kind of knew that could be a possibility coming in,” said Scherzer when asked about whether his feel for his pitches was off in the first inning. “Execution was just a tick off, trying to get a feel for where the zone is… I didn’t want the top of the order to beat me right off the bat, and unfortunately I walked two guys.”

Yet Scherzer averted disaster. He left a curveball up in the zone, but Polanco merely fouled it off. Two pitches later he chased a changeup just off the plate, and hit a hard grounder right to a perfectly positioned Giménez, who was practically standing on second base as he started a 6-3 double play:

After the Blue Jays failed to score in the second, the Mariners got on the board when Josh Naylor led off the third by drilling a changeup on the outer edge of the strike zone 394 feet to center field, just over the outstretched glove of Daulton Varsho, for his second homer of the series:

Scherzer set down the side after that, and then for the second night in a row, the Blue Jays countered the Mariners’ early scoring with a big third inning in which they sent nine batters to the plate. In his first plate appearance of the ALCS, Isiah Kiner-Falefa chopped a double down the left field line. Kiner-Falefa was in the lineup at second base because Anthony Santander was removed from the roster due to the back tightness. Schneider shifted Addison Barger from third base to right field and Ernie Clement from second to third, opening the spot for IKF (Joey Loperfido replaced Santander on the roster).

Up came Giménez, who hit just .210/.285/.313 (70 wRC+) with seven homers during the regular season but had been a pest from the number nine spot in the postseason, hitting .269/.321/.423 (109 wRC+); in the third inning of Game 3, he followed a leadoff double by Clement with a homer off George Kirby. This time, he battled to a full count, then crushed a low-middle slider for a two-run homer to right field, giving the Blue Jays a 3-1 lead. While Castillo retired George Springer on a grounder, Nathan Lukes and Guerrero both followed with singles up the middle, and then Castillo walked Alejandro Kirk to load the bases.

That was enough for manager Dan Wilson, who pulled Castillo after just 48 pitches; he’d retired six of the first seven hitters, but just one of the next six. Wilson — who said afterwards that he had planned to be aggressive with the bullpen — brought in lefty Gabe Speier to face the lefty-swinging Varsho. Speier had been their most effective reliever this side of closer Andrés Muñoz during the regular season, but he served up two homers to lefty-swinging Tigers in the Division Series. He nibbled, and ended up walking Varsho to force in a run. While he recovered to strike out both Clement (no small achievement given his penchant for contact) and Barger, the Blue Jays now led 3-1.

In the bottom of the third, Scherzer did something he hadn’t done since 2016: pick a runner off first base. Leo Rivas, making his first start of the postseason, drew a five-pitch walk. Arozarena lined out, and then with a 1-1 count against Raleigh, Scherzer stepped off the rubber and fired to Guerrero, who lowered the tag on the sliding Rivas. Umpire D.J. Reyburn ruled him safe, but the Blue Jays challenged the call, and it was overturned:

Scherzer then struck out Raleigh on a curveball in the dirt, and from there it was all Blue Jays. They scored two runs in the fourth, as Kiner-Falefa singled, took second on a sacrifice bunt by Giménez, and scored on a Springer double, with Springer taking third on a Lukes grounder. Wilson replaced Speier with righty Matt Brash, who bounced a slider off Raleigh’s shin guard and far from the plate, bringing Springer home and expanding the Blue Jays’ lead to 5-1.

At that point, the biggest suspense involved how long Scherzer could last. Though he allowed a two-out single to Naylor, he bookended the fourth inning with strikeouts of Rodríguez and Suárez, both chasing curveballs. He yielded a leadoff single to Dominic Canzone to start the fifth, then retired both Crawford and Rivas on hard-hit balls to the outfield; the latter smoked one 104.8 mph into the right center gap, but Barger did a great job of running it down:

It was at that point that Schneider ventured to the mound. Regarding the meeting, Scherzer said afterwards, “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, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m not coming out of this ball game. Like, I feel too good.’ So we had a little conversation that basically, I wanted to stay in the ball game, but just with some other words involved.”

He escaped the inning and after what Schneider described as “another fun conversation in the tunnel,” Scherzer, who had thrown 74 pitches, returned for the sixth. He needed just two pitches to induce Raleigh to fly out, then struck out Rodríguez on three pitches before walking Polanco, at which point Schneider called upon lefty Mason Fluharty. He walked Naylor, and then Suárez singled to right, scoring Polanco. For some reason, Naylor challenged Barger’s arm by going for third, and he was out by a country mile. Instead of having the tying run at the plate with men on first and second, the Mariners ran themselves out of the inning:

That run was charged to Scherzer, but it didn’t diminish the impact of his outing. He yielded three hits and walked four but struck out five while throwing 87 pitches. Of his 12 whiffs, six came via his curveball — four for strike three — yet he threw just 10 curves on the night, compared to 15 changeups, 16 sliders, and 45 four-seamers (he also threw one cutter). Just one of those 10 curves was in the strike zone, the pitch that Polanco fouled off before his GIDP. Mariners hitters chased the other nine, hitting into two outs and fouling one off when they weren’t whiffing.

It was a remarkable resurgence for the pitch. While there was talk of Scherzer tipping his pitches during the regular season, it centered around his changeup, but batters did much less damage against that pitch (which they hit for a .279 average and .395 slugging percentage) than they did his curve, which they whacked for a .349 average and a .674 slugging percentage, with just a 23.6% whiff rate, nine points below his rate in 2023, when batters slugged just .373 against the pitch. On the Fox postgame broadcast, Kevin Burkhardt pointed out that Scherzer had punched out just eight hitters all season via the curve, but again, had four on the night.

“I just had a good feel for it tonight,” said Scherzer of his curve, whose prominence hadn’t been part of his original game plan. “Was able to really step on it and rip it and [get] some big strikeouts in some big situations on it.”

The Blue Jays tacked on another run in the seventh with a solo homer by Guerrero, his majors-leading fifth of the postseason, and then two more in the eighth, both driven in by Giménez. But the real story was Mad Max, who looked like the fiery big-game pitcher the Blue Jays signed for nights like these.

Kiri Oler contributed reporting to this piece.