CLEARWATER, Fla. -- Typically, Spring Training buzz is reserved for the top prospects, the new guys, the players half Max Scherzer’s age.
There’s never been anything typical about Scherzer, though, and the Blue Jays don’t need typical. This team doesn’t need average innings in a rotation spilling over with big league starters. The Blue Jays need something spectacular, and while it’s difficult to ask for eight more months of that at 41 years old, Scherzer still has it.
Over four no-hit innings Saturday in Scherzer’s first start of the spring with the Blue Jays, we saw it again. The best of Scherzer came only in flashes last season, a handful of those sprinkled throughout the regular season with a few more in October. He’s healthy, though, vehement that his thumb issues are finally behind him. Results in March rarely matter much, especially for someone with Scherzer’s resume, but Saturday’s game -- a 1-0 Toronto victory -- showed us why the Blue Jays have been so optimistic about this working.
Scherzer sat 94-96 mph in the first inning and averaged 93.9 for the day, an extremely encouraging number for this point in the spring. Comparing spring velocities can be a fool’s errand, but one year ago (March 8, 2025), Scherzer averaged 92.5 mph on his heater in a spring game.
There’s much more to this conversation than fastball velocities in March, but if those are moving in the right direction and we’re not talking about his thumb? That’s when this can get exciting.
“It’s a tick up,” Scherzer said. “And that’s natural. In those live BPs, I was 91-94, and that’s usually a good sign. Once you get into game situations and it’s hot -- a nice 85-degree day today -- my arm felt good and everything felt good. The velo ticks up again. I felt good and I was strong all the way through the fourth inning from a velo standpoint, and that’s a good sign.”
This tracks with what manager John Schneider has been saying. At this point in spring, you want some affirmation alongside the buzz, which is exactly what this represents.
“After his first side session, [pitching coach] Pete [Walker] and I were pleasantly surprised with his locations, velo, and the shape of his breaking ball,” Schneider said. “It’s ahead of where it was last year, for sure, at this time.”
In every way, the Blue Jays are acting like a team chasing a World Series, which will bring some uncomfortable decisions along with it. If times come throughout the season where Scherzer, Cody Ponce or José Berríos aren’t one of this team’s five best starters, there will be no room for sentimentality. This is the American League East, which will surely come down to the final days of the season.
In this year’s rotation, the 2025 version of Scherzer won’t fit. Working around that thumb issue, Scherzer pitched to a 5.19 ERA. Combine that with Bowden Francis’ 6.05 ERA and the Blue Jays’ rotation essentially had a full season of a rotation spot that provided little value. The Blue Jays are chasing Scherzer’s upside, though, believing that it’s still in there, and Saturday gave us every reason to believe that’s true.
This needs to work for Scherzer in the rotation, too. He’s particularly routine oriented and doesn’t feel like the most natural option to slide to a bullpen role by any means, so the stakes are high here.
Now, Scherzer gets to focus on fine tuning, which is what great pitchers want to be focused on. He gets to focus on the shapes of his pitches, particularly that great slider, and work on the feel for his changeup, which produced the one swinging strikeout Saturday.
It’s all easier without that pesky thumb in the way. Scherzer feels like he found a solution for that in the second half of last season, which allowed him to perform in the playoffs and enjoy a regular offseason. The Blue Jays have always believed that if Scherzer is healthy, he can raise this group’s ceiling, even at 41.
“It doesn’t hurt my arm. My thumb is fine. I can manage this, it allows my thumb to be normal and I can pitch normal,” Scherzer said.
If you’re Max Scherzer, “normal” still looks really, really good.