TORONTO — As Max Scherzer circled the mound in preparation for his latest live batting practice, Kyle Schwarber emerged from the Philadelphia Phillies dugout — in full uniform — and casually stepped into the batter’s box.
The gathered Toronto Blue Jays crew played it straight while awaiting the right-hander’s reaction. Once Scherzer noticed he cracked up, yelled at his one-time Washington Nationals teammate to remain in the box, and when he didn’t, barked, “You think I’m going to hit you? I want to punch your ticket.”
Big laughs all around.
“I came around and saw (Schwarber) and I’m like, let’s go, come on, I hope you hit. It’d be so much fun,” Scherzer said after throwing about 40 pitches during a two-inning simulation against Davis Schneider, Alan Roden and assistant hitting coach Hunter Mense, his teammate at the University of Missouri. “It’s good fun because I’d rather be facing the real thing than sitting here in live BPs.”
Scherzer’s another step closer to that after Tuesday’s session, which came about 3 ½ hours before an 8-3 beatdown of Bowden Francis and the Blue Jays highlighted why his progress is so important.
Francis looked to have turned a corner with five shutout innings in his previous outing at the Texas Rangers, but he was ambushed out of the gate by the Phillies, as Bryson Stott’s leadoff walk was followed by home runs from Trea Turner and Bryce Harper.
After a Schwarber strikeout, the next four Phillies reached, capped by a J.T. Realmuto RBI single. After Brandon Marsh struck out, Stott lashed a single that scored two more before Turner flew out, ending the six-run, 39-pitch onslaught.
Francis did get two more outs in the second, when Harper scored after tagging from second on a flyball to right and getting hit by Addison Barger’s attempt to get him at third, but it was lefty Eric Lauer who saved the bullpen with four hitless innings of emergency relief.
Paxton Schultz followed with 1.1 innings before an inning each from Erik Swanson and Braydon Fisher to help further mitigate the damage to the bullpen. But the next makeshift outing in Scherzer’s vacated spot comes up again Friday, and covering that will now be more complicated as a result.
The Blue Jays’ plan has been to fill that spot with Spencer Turnbull, who is slated to start Friday at triple-A Buffalo in the final outing before the 35-day optional assignment agreed to in his contract runs out. But his velocity was down during a 1.2 inning, 53-pitch outing Sunday for the Bisons, and the internal “reports were kind of a weird outing,” said manager John Schneider. “Still working through some mechanical stuff. Hopefully have a good session off the mound in between and get back after it.”
Turnbull, who finished last season on the injured list with a lat strain, has now made four appearances since signing a $1.265-million, one-year deal last month, getting up to 73 pitches while throwing 4.1 innings for low-A Dunedin on May 27.
To successfully join the Blue Jays rotation, “you want him close to 75, I think, when you’re looking at that role,” said Schneider. “So, yeah, fairly big next outing for him, I would say.”
Especially if Francis’ recent correction is short-lived.
His ERA in 12 starts this season is 5.84 and he’s made it through five innings only six times, with the inconsistency of his outings prompting the Blue Jays to reshuffle their rotation, separating him and the rotation vacancy for precisely the type of scenario that played out Tuesday.
The early hole not only put the bullpen under immense strain, but it also buried an offence that scored 39 runs in a four-game sweep of the Athletics over the weekend, doubling the challenge against the legit pitching staff of the Phillies.
Cristopher Sanchez cruised through six innings, allowing four hits, including a Davis Schneider solo shot in the fifth, and four walks, but was never in a serious jam before a Rogers Centre crowd of 32,632.
That put an end to a season-high five-game win streak for the Blue Jays (31-29), who are entering a more significant litmus test against the Phillies ahead of a nine-game road trip to wild-card rival Minnesota, St. Louis and a Philadelphia rematch. They’re coming off a different 10-game run of extremes, scoring twice while being swept in three games at Tampa Bay, scoring four times while taking two of three at Texas before exploding against the A’s.
Schneider is hoping the coming stretch is “not as up and down as it was.”
“You do run into certain types of pitchers that are tough on you, and you run into certain types of pitchers that you can handle a little bit,” he continued. “You’ve got to find ways to win the close games when you’re facing really top-end starters and relievers. That’s a sign of when a team is turning the corner, when you can do that.”
Their own starters have to give them a chance, though, which is why the next steps for Turnbull and Scherzer really matter.
Scherzer’s plan is to throw 50-55 pitches in a controlled environment at the Blue Jays’ Player Development Complex in Dunedin, Fla., on Sunday, calling that pitch count “the magic number for me” since that’s the threshold where his thumb issues typically flare up.
“That’s where I keep failing,” is the way he put it. “Hopefully, I’m in a better spot this time … and that my body holds up and I can recover out of that.”
If all goes well there, next up would be a rehab game of four innings and a 65-pitch max, and as long as his body holds up, he and the Blue Jays could try to hit the gas from there.
None of that will happen in time to get him an encounter with Schwarber that counts, even if he may actually be getting closer to the real thing.
