TORONTO — Max Scherzer likes pitching. That should be obvious, given that he’s still going at 40 years old after winning three Cy Young Awards, celebrating two World Series and banking hundreds of millions in career earnings.
He also likes talking pitching — something his new Toronto Blue Jays rotation mates were quick to pick up on during spring training. Still, no one but Chris Bassitt had ever played with Scherzer before, which meant the conversations began a little tentatively with the rest of the group.
“Eighty per cent listening probably,” said Bowden Francis, the youngest and least experienced member of the Blue Jays’ rotation at 28 years old. “Staying out of his way.”
But spring training is long, and the Blue Jays’ entire rotation had lockers beside one another at the team’s player development complex, so conversations with Scherzer gradually gained a little momentum. Soon enough, they realized how much he likes talking pitching, and listening to others do the same.
“This game can drive you crazy,” Scherzer said at one point this spring. “There are times where you want to just take a baseball bat and just beat things, and I’ve been there, but I’ve just learned over the years, I’ve beaten enough stuff to death that I’ve realized that’s not always the best way to think about it. Sometimes, it’s the other guys on the bench watching you pitch seeing a pattern for three games that just caught you now. So sometimes it’s not about getting mad, it’s about listening.”
In Bassitt, Francis, Kevin Gausman and Jose Berrios, Scherzer has four rotation mates who want to listen to him. To be fair, they’d probably want to listen to any three-time Cy Young winner, including a retired pitcher like Pedro Martinez or Greg Maddux. But augmenting Scherzer’s credibility further, he’s still pitching at a high level against the game’s best hitters. There’s a lot to learn here.
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As Scherzer prepares for his first start as a member of the Blue Jays on Saturday afternoon, those discussions are about to ramp up even further, and his teammates are looking forward to the insights they can gain as the season unfolds.
“It’s an interesting way of going about things, but he has a method to all of his madness, and he’s a very smart guy,” Gausman said in Dunedin Fla., one day this spring. “Way smarter than I think I thought, which sounds bad to say, but he’s very complex in everything that he’s doing and very focused on everything that goes with his craft.”
Gausman can tell the details matter to Scherzer. There’s no coasting here.
“That’s the main thing is he looks at it as a craft,” Gausman continued. “He’s one of the best that’s ever been, especially in my generation, so I’m looking forward to watching his bulldog mentality on start days. That’s more impressive to me than anything is that he still pitches like a rookie does with his mentality — kind of like he hasn’t done anything, but obviously, he’s done a lot in the game, so it’s really cool to watch.”
In the course of spring training, there were moments of levity for Scherzer, who admitted he couldn’t take Trea Turner seriously when his former Nationals teammate challenged the first pitch of an early spring game. No one maintains peak intensity for five weeks of Grapefruit League action, not even Mad Max. But as Berrios got to know Scherzer better, he could see how competitive his new teammate is.
“His attitude and his mindset is always about winning,” Berrios said. “He wants to compete and he wants to win.”
Pitching alongside Scherzer with the 2022 Mets, Bassitt got to know Scherzer pretty well. They talked a lot of pitching in New York, and Bassitt saw how those conversations helped others on the Mets’ staff. There’s a lot of knowledge Scherzer could share, of course, but this wasn’t a case of a veteran talking down to younger players.
“The best way to explain it is he’s going to ask pretty simple questions, but you got to have a good explanation as to why (you did something),” Bassitt said. “And luckily for us, we have Bowden, who’s somewhat young, but he’s still old enough to not have it overwhelm him. And then Gaus, Berrios and me, we’re old enough where we’re not a young staff, so I think it’s going to be really big for us just to keep us accountable every single day and have us think about instead of a lot more basic stuff, a lot more in-depth detail, stuff that I think will translate to success.”
Bassitt’s not exactly a peer of Scherzer’s — no active pitcher this side of Justin Verlander can claim that distinction — but at 36 years old with more than a decade in the major leagues, he’s about as close as it gets.
By way of contrast, there’s Francis, who has enjoyed hearing Scherzer share his thought process on preparation, mechanics and pitch selection.
“Incredible,” Francis said. “And I’ll throw some questions at him here and there just to see what he’s got on that (topic). That’s one of the best parts with him. I feel like no question is dumb to him, he’s just open to answering it.”
Clearly, Scherzer has an interested audience. And since everyone in the Blue Jays’ rotation has significant professional pitching experience, they can skip past some basics to more advanced topics.
“You’ve got to know who you’re talking to because not everyone’s going to grab onto every word you say,” Scherzer said. “So you’ve got to be careful sometimes. Sometimes, it’s only giving one little thing. It’s really just perspective — how you think about how to execute pitches, how you can be process-driven. What am I actually trying to do with the baseball? How do I think about different pitch shapes?”
If that sounds advanced, just wait. As the season progresses and the stakes of the games rise, Scherzer predicts the conversations will get more detailed.
“It’s great now, I’m sure guys are enjoying it now,” he said after one spring game. “But where the actual fun is where I’m critiquing myself. Like, hey, this is why I’m getting beat. This is why I got beat today. It’s those conversations that sink home the most.”
