BOSTON -- Just hours before Max Scherzer was scheduled to make a crucial start against the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Wednesday, the Blue Jays placed the veteran starter back on the IL with back spasms.
This is Scherzer’s second trip to the IL this season after he previously dealt with right forearm tendinitis and left ankle inflammation. The starts he’s made around these injuries haven’t been sharp, either, with Scherzer often trying to pitch through forearm issues earlier in the season.
Scherzer described this as a “spasm in the middle of my left back,” but made it clear that this is just a spasm, nothing structural and nothing worrying. The question now is whether Scherzer loses the recent build-up from his last IL stint, or if he’ll need to build back up with a rehab stint at the end of this, prolonging his absence.
“That will be dependent on when I get back out, how quickly we can get through this and figure out what’s going to happen next,” Scherzer said. “Right now, we’re just taking it a day at a time. We’ll just get rid of the spasm, get back to feeling healthy like I was. It’s frustrating. Very frustrating.”
As it stands, Scherzer owns a 10.23 ERA over six starts this season, including making just one start since his last IL activation on June 10. Two of those starts have felt “normal,” going six innings, while the other four have been shortened by either injuries or workload limits, falling in the range of two to 3 1/3 innings. Even in a Blue Jays rotation desperate for any innings it can get from starting pitchers, this has been a challenging fit through the first three months of the season.
“It’s hard to judge. It’s been sporadic, it’s been inconsistent,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “He hasn’t been able to get into a rhythm, really. Even going back to Spring Training, he signed late and I felt like that was when he was in his best rhythm. It’s hard to say that this is what he is or this is what he’s going to be. You want to see it a little bit before you make any judgement. He just hasn’t been able to get out there consistently.”
There’s no resignation to Scherzer, though. There may never be, no matter how many times he slams into a wall with another injury.
He’s trying to lean on the old adage that you’re never as high or as low as you think you are. Scherzer is an obsessive competitor, back for his age-41 season with the Blue Jays craving one more run, one shot at the World Series after coming so close a year ago. The numbers aren’t there and his health hasn’t been there, but he’s refusing to let the sun go down.
“I absolutely have the utmost belief that I can be out there, I can be pitching, I can be helping this team win,” Scherzer said. “Nothing that has happened has changed any course of that. I’ve just got to get through this. I just have another thing I have to deal with and get over. These things happen when you’re 41 years old trying to pitch. It happened. This is the hand I’m dealt.”
In Scherzer’s place, rookie Chad Dallas has been recalled from Triple-A Buffalo, a candidate to pitch some bulk innings behind opener Braydon Fisher on Wednesday.
Wednesday’s start already felt like it was going to carry some extra weight for Scherzer, who has been pitching to keep his spot in the Blue Jays’ rotation when Shane Bieber returns from his own IL stint after working out some forearm and elbow issues leftover from Toronto's 2025 World Series run. Bieber made what could be his final rehab outing on Wednesday afternoon with Triple-A Buffalo, and while his stat line wasn’t pretty (five runs, four walks and two homers), he got up to 80 pitches over those five innings.
Bieber’s return looked like it would force the Blue Jays to make a decision between Scherzer and veteran lefty Patrick Corbin, who has slowed down recently after a great start to his tenure with Toronto. Corbin has allowed 11 earned runs over 11 2/3 innings in his last three starts, but with Scherzer hitting the IL, he’ll be sticking in the rotation for the foreseeable future.